


The Death and Life of Waverly Earp

by Seda



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Also actions that can be read as borderline suicidal, Angst, But actually a happy ending believe it or not, Chapter 2 has some stuff that can be read as self-harm, Extensive theories on the afterlife don't @ me, F/F, Like super mega angst I'm not kidding y'all, Not how it was intended but ymmv, Smut, The clue is in the title, Wynaught brotp by the shit-ton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-09-29 19:20:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17209439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seda/pseuds/Seda
Summary: Somewhere in the haze and lurch of drink Nicole finds herself stood at the threshold of Waverly's room.She looks, and sees.The room is lightness, and warmth, and awash with so many happy memories. She sees the decorating touches Waverly had made when she'd first took the room over. Nicole remembers that day she'd interrupted her, the day they'd first...She sees the photos of them dotted around the room. The one of her right by Waverly's bedside. The ones of them both that had crept up on dressers and walls over the last year, beaming in candid happy selfies. The framing tilted slightly as Waverly took the snaps, Nicole's arms out of shot but Nicole knew, could almost feel, looped around Waverly's waist. Where they belong.She stares and stares; and feels nothing. Or feels too much for it to even begin to register.---This one actually has a happy ending, as far as it possibly can in the circumstances. But only after some serious *serious* sad stuff.Chapter 3 is now up and pretty much tells you what the happy ending is - so if the concept of this intrigues you but you wanna know how it's gonna shake out before embarking on the pain of the first two, check that out first.





	1. Death and Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> So. A little while ago I made the profound mistake of swearing that I would never even hurt Wynonna, Waverly or Nicole, let alone have any of them die in any of my fics.
> 
> Mistake, because then of course my idiot brain instantly started off thinking - yeah, but what would it look like if one of them *did*...
> 
> So that was percolating anyway. Then I was on a train through one of the more beautifully bleak backwaters of home at Christmas, a time which (like most people who celebrate it I suspect) does my bloody nut in, so was feeling pretty crappy besides. And the winter sun was shining low and cold in a very Purgatory way, failing miserably to burn off the mists gathered in hollows along the way; and that put me in even more of the mood...and this story kinda just started playing out in aforementioned done-in head without anything much in the way of conscious encouragement. And by the time I'd arrived at the shitty dirty city of my destination, it was ready to be written down. 
> 
> Has taken me a couple of weeks to do that, and to gather the nerve to actually post it. Because, this is a fic in which Waverly dies, and Nicole and Wynonna mourn her. I need to be really really clear about this - that happens, it was not all a dream, it actually happens. Please please don't read if you don't want to read about that.
> 
> I know that's not what any of us come here for, so I don't blame you one tiny bit if that doesn't appeal. But, well I always think once written, may as well put it out there. There may be one or two takers who'll get something from it. And the the title is written that way for a reason. The death very much isn't the end of the story.
> 
> (If you're curious about where the happy end is going to come from, but don't want to sit and stew in the difficult bits, wait until chapter 3 is out before starting to read. I should be updating twice a week.)

Wynonna and Nicole race through the snow-clad forests surrounding the Ghost River, on the desperate chase of their lives.

They wade through the freezing river, scramble down rocky escarpments, and cut their hands to shreds squeezing through thickets of brambles. On a visible trail, but a trail nearly gone cold.

They know it's likely a hopeless chase. But they give it their all, and then they give it more.

Because Waverly has been taken. More. Waverly has been taken by a revenant they know is out for blood, not bargaining.

Both know it's likely they're already too late. Both are completely unable to look that fact in the face.

 

+++

 

When they come upon the revenant's hide-out, the swiftness, violence and brutality of their joined attack is out of character for both of them, but not a surprise to either. And his end barely registers as a flicker of satisfaction before they're frantically searching for her, inside the shack, then out, finally seeing her twenty feet away in the snow. The demon had let her try to crawl to safety, knowing she'd never make it.

Nicole is on her first, turning her carefully on her back, gathering her up into her arms, and feeling her mouth run with sickened saliva when she sees the extent of Waverly's injuries. There are patches of darkened blood all down her front; stab wounds it looks like, some still oozing. She is deathly pale, and her lips are blue, and Nicole's heart thuds hard as she sees at least some movement, a nearly imperceptible chatter of frozen teeth.

Wynonna skids to her knees the other side of her and repeats the horrified, terrible inspection of her sister's state as Nicole gently caresses Waverly's hair, then face, rocking her in her arms.

“Baby. Baby, I'm here. Baby, wake up for me. Please wake up.”

Waverly seems to stir at the sound. She barely moves but Nicole feels it, the hint of a nestling into her touch.

Her eyelids flutter and open, and Nicole nearly loses it there and then, because she sees in Waverly's eyes the knowledge.

This is it. This time it's gone too far, they're too far from help, there's no way out.

Wynonna must see it too, because the desperation of her tone is in stark contrast to her words.

“No - hold on baby girl, we'll get you to a hospital, you'll be fine, you're gonna be just fine.”

Only Waverly Earp could lie there dying, and manage to frame a look of pure loving frustration for her sister. She manages the tiniest fraction of a shake of a head, and that silences Wynonna. Because she had lost family member after family member, and whilst this was going to be the hardest loss yet, she at least couldn't say she couldn't believe it was happening. She’d had enough practice by now to believe just how cruel life could be.

Waverly tries to say something to Wynonna, but all that comes out is a croak, and a crackle of of bloody spit.

Nicole wipes her lips clean with a thumb. “Shh, baby, don't try to speak, shhh.”

Waverly ignores Nicole. Summoning some great strength from within, that resolute Waverly Earp toughness that both Nicole and Wynonna were secretly in awe of, she manages to turn her head a fraction towards Wynonna, and with the ghost of a voice, aspirates her words.

“So - sorry. Love you. Be - strong. Tell Alice - ”

Wynonna starts crying, leaning as close to her sister as she can with Waverly held as close as she is against Nicole's chest, and she's holding one hand, and stroking Waverly's hair, as she gulps out, “Oh, baby girl. I will. I will. I love you so much, Waverly. You know that I always loved you, right?”

Waverly manages a nod, and the hint of a smile. But then her darkening eyes slide to Nicole, who is numb with shock, with the sheer impossibility of what's happening. Waverly whispers again, weaker still, almost inaudible, as she gazes up into her lover's tearful eyes.

“Love - you. _Love_ you. Thank - you.”

Nicole's head is shaking, back and forth. This can't be happening. This can't be happening.

The closing of Waverly's eyes shocks her into voice, and a voice so broken and wretched she doesn't recognise it as her own.

“I love you too, Waverly. I love you so so much. You made my life complete. You made me complete. I love you. I love you.”

She doesn't know when she's started crying too, only sees the tears fall and mingle with the blood soaking Waverly's chest.

Which rises one more time, and falls, as she squeezes out one more effort at speech.

“Kiss - me.”

Nicole bends, and kisses Waverly.

And then the silence of the snowy woods blankets the women, two sobbing and bent, and the third, finally still.

 

+++

 

Time passes.

 

Nicole's legs are numb. Either from holding the same huddled posture for so long, or from the freezing snow beneath them.

Wynonna has been off somewhere, screaming and shouting and emptying Peacemaker into the sky. As if she could take down God, for all that he's done.

Nicole barely registers it. She hasn't looked up from her lover, once.

She looks peaceful now, like she's just sleeping. Nicole allows her eyes to rove again over her face, her hair, her body. She's carefully cleaned the specks of blood from Waverly's face, and has used her fingers to comb her hair into order, so that it falls naturally around her shoulders. And she's been sitting holding and looking at her for so long that even the dark blood that has soaked all the way down her front has stopped looking strange to her.

She is the most beautiful person Nicole has ever known. Beautiful on the outside, but that just a shadow to the beauty inside.

Nicole is still for her. The tears have long since dried up. She just is still, and quiet, and there for Waverly. She just holds her, and is there for her, like she always has been, right from the beginning.

 

There is a crunch of boots in snow, and then the shadow of Wynonna crouching down next to her. Nicole feels a hand on her shoulder, and hears a hoarse voice.

“Nicole. Dude. Time to go.”

Nicole doesn't look up, doesn't reply. Just shakes her head.

“You're literally going blue, Nicole. And she's - she's not there anymore, you know that, right?”

Wynonna pulls on Nicole's sleeve, who flinches away, pulling Waverly's lifeless body closer to her protectively.

“ _No_.”

It's the first thing she's said, and it comes out scratchy and raw.

“Dude…” Wynonna stands, sighs. Walks around and sits heedlessly down in the snow opposite Nicole. Studiously not looking down at her sister's still form, but carefully at Nicole instead.

“Have you any idea how much she loved you, Nicole? I mean, you know my sister - she had so much love in her heart for everyone. But you? It was something else.

And you made her so happy. No, it was more than that. You made her - _her_. You know, before you came along she was trying to be all things to all people. And we all had our expectations, and she tried to meet them all - even mine.”

Wynonna puffs out a regretful sigh.

“But then when she met you, it was like - I dunno, dude. A light came on, or something. You loved her for who she was. And I swear I've never seen - she just _shone_. _You_ did that, Nicole.

I have no idea how she kept you two quiet at first, you know. 'Cause once I knew, she never frickin’ shut up about you. Nicole this, Nicole that. Nicole who blew her mind in bed with some body and soul connection shit - I could have done without knowing that one, Haught.”

The tears have started to roll down Nicole's face again, and she's rocking Waverly back and forward.

“And I know she was the same for you. You two were just - something else. We all knew it, Nicole. You were it for her, and she for you. And these last couple of years, even with everything that's gone on, were the best years of her life. You know that, right?”

Nicole nods, quick and helpless. Through staccato hitching breaths, she manages to reply.

“Mine too. Mine too.”

Wynonna gives her a moment, before going on, softer.

“And you're going to carry all that away with you in your heart, away from here. That's not in - there, any more.”

Nicole doesn't argue. Not exactly.

“I - I can't leave her. It's cold.”

Another heavy sigh. “We climbed down a cliff, dude. We'll come back for her, but for now, there's just no way. And you know that if we sit here and freeze to death, she'd kick our asses.”

Nicole actually sobs out half a laugh, looking down at Waverly in tender love.

“Yeah. She would.”

Wynonna sees Nicole accept this, and accept that they need to leave. But she doesn't move to put Waverly down. After a time, she looks up at Wynonna, helplessly.

“I can't, Wy. I just can't.”

“Okay. Okay. Here, let me…”

Wynonna shifts to her knees, and puts her own arms under Waverly, cradling her head in the crook of her arm, and for a moment they're both holding the body, until Wynonna reaches out and physically removes Nicole's hands and arms from her, taking the weight of her sister fully.

With her arms now empty, it's like Nicole doesn't know what to do with her hands. She wraps one arm around her own waist, and brings the other to her face, covering her red-rimmed eyes, shaking her head, rocking slightly. So she doesn't see Wynonna carefully lay Waverly down; doesn't see that despite her own words, Wynonna can't bear to lay her sister's head directly on the frozen ground, and removes her own wool hat to use as a makeshift pillow for her. She bends over, and kisses her sister's forehead goodbye, whispering something final and unheard into her ear.

Nicole doesn't see anything, doesn't register anything, until she feels Wynonna slip an arm around her own back and under her armpit, pulling.

“C'mon, Haught. One leg. Atta girl. Now the other. Okay, ally-oop! Okay, good. Now, c'mon.”

They stumble together away from the lifeless body in the snow.

 

* * *

 

The first night passes in a blur. Wynonna gets them to safety, then gets Dolls on the case, who gravely and gently steers Nicole through all the necessary police procedurals. They're both vaguely aware that an ambulance is being sent, and Purgatory Sheriff's Department will look for the killer.

They don't even bother trying to explain.

Then, with everything handed off to responsible adults, and both Wynonna and Nicole deposited safely back at the homestead, it's as if a switch is flicked, and Wynonna allows herself to lose it.

There is whiskey, and more shouting, and screams into the uncaring night. Nicole is still numb with shock, and so just watches it all play out in front of her without intervening. Until at one point Wynonna starts whaling on the barn door, punching hard and wild at the wood as if she was going to tear the whole world down, piece by piece, starting with whatever is in front of her. Nicole doesn't say anything, just bodily grabs her, and pins her arms, and wrestles her back to the house.

She doesn't reprimand Wynonna, or make any move to stop her drinking deep deep draughts of whiskey as she drags her up the homestead steps. She just gets her inside and sat down, cleans up and bandages Wynonna's bloody knuckles best she can, and then wordlessly takes the whiskey bottle from her, and takes an even deeper swig straight from the bottle. She almost gags, but holds a fist to her mouth, and once the heave and roll of her stomach had subsided, takes another. Passes the bottle back to Wynonna.

 

+++

 

Somewhere in the haze and lurch of the drink Nicole finds herself stood at the threshold of Waverly's room. It's the middle of the night, and pitch black, so when she flicks on the light for a moment she's almost blinded.

She looks, and sees.

The room is lightness, and warmth, and awash with so many happy memories. Her eyes flicker around the room. She sees the decorating touches Waverly had made when she'd first took the room over. Nicole remembers that day she'd interrupted her in her work, the day they'd first...

She sees the photos of them dotted around the room. The one of her right by Waverly's bedside. The ones of them both that had crept up on dressers and walls over the last year, beaming in candid happy selfies. The framing tilted slightly as Waverly took the snaps, Nicole's arms out of shot but Nicole knew, could almost feel, looped around Waverly's waist, where they belong.

She sees the touches of her own partial habitation of the space; a box for her own jewelry on the dresser, a half finished book left with a page folded down, much to Waverly's consternation, on the table by her side of the bed.

She stares and stares; and feels nothing. Or feels too much for it to even begin to register.

 

She doesn't know how long she's been standing there in the doorway when Wynonna comes upon her. She stares for a second too, and then reaches out, and turns out the light again. Puts a hand around Nicole's elbow, and wordlessly pulls her away, down the stairs, and through to Wynonna's curtained-off room. Nicole sits on the bed, then pivots and lies back, one arm over her eyes, the other up and grasping at the roots of her own hair, pulling hard as if the physical pain could somehow lessen the emotional. Wynonna takes a final swig out of a bottle, shakes it, registering it empty, and collapses next to her, staring unseeing up at the ceiling.

 

In all the guilt they feel over the months and years that follow; guilt for being too late to save Waverly, guilt for not simply sending her far far away from Purgatory in the first place, guilt for simply surviving, both carry one sharp and unreasonable guilt from this first night.

Because, for all the horror of what's happened, and the fact that neither thinks they deserve any rest or break from it; after the physical exertions of the day, the greater emotional ones, and the best part of a full bottle of whiskey each inside of them, when dawn starts to crawl around, they both manage to fall asleep.

 

+++

 

For days Nicole is numb.

She goes and sees Nedley, and he signs her off work for a week. He stares at her worriedly when she doesn't even argue, but just gets up and wordlessly leaves.

She floats between her own apartment and the homestead, feeling empty and out of place in both. She tries to go back to work, just to do some paperwork. But the words swim unfathomably in front of her face, she can't make any sense of them. And she definitely can't handle her colleagues' awkward attempts at sympathy or concern.

At night she does stay at the homestead, only able to even begin to think about sleeping surrounded by the home and the memories of Waverly. By unspoken agreement she sleeps in Wynonna's bed again, both drunk on whiskey again, both falling asleep still dressed, neither bothering with routine or comfort.

They don't embrace; theirs is not that sort of relationship. But when one or the other starts shaking in the night with disbelieving tears, they will offer some sign of comfort. Nicole will reach out a hand and place it flat on Wynonna's back as she's curled up into a foetal ball, sobbing great heaving sobs. When the tears fall from Nicole's eyes, when she's shaking her head back and forth in continued refusal of what's happened, Wynonna will pull away one of the hands Nicole is holding to her face and hold it, squeeze it.

 

+++

 

The afternoon of the fourth day, Nicole's numbness finally breaks.

She’s in the homestead kitchen, making tea. One of the pointless time wasting rituals they're using to pace out and chase away the minutes of the day, until it's time to start drinking again. She looks down at the cup in her hand, and a shadow of a smile flits over her face. It's a nondescript lemon-yellow cup; but she remembers this one, has always secretly remembered this one, as the cup Waverly had brought her coffee in the first time she'd stayed over the full night at the homestead. The morning after a night in which they'd made love for hours, turning and burning in each other's arms, falling asleep late and in love and with the taste of each other on their lips.

The loss of that is far too great to even begin to comprehend. But when Wynonna comes into the kitchen ten minutes later to see where Nicole and their drinks had got to, she finds her half-sat, half lying on the floor, shuddering with floods of tears, cradling the cup.

Because whilst even the thought that Waverly will never bring her coffee again was still too big, the idea that Waverly will never bring her coffee in _this particular cup_ is a loss of a size she can finally grasp; and it's that that breaks the dam of her grief.

And with that breach, everything else surges through too, overloading and then breaking her. All those small gestures Waverly had used to show her love for Nicole are, just, _gone_. The coffees, and teas, and lunches made for Nicole just the way she liked. Those made the way she didn't for that matter; Nicole never having the heart to tell her, because they always came with the radiant smile Waverly wore when she did something to show Nicole she was cared for and loved. The warmth when she'd reach out in reply to Nicole's own smitten smile of appreciation, and just touch her, just a hand on an arm, just the need to connect.

Her touch. Her kiss. God. Her _kiss_. Her warmth, and her love, and her light - all gone. Gone. And their future gone too. They'd never get married. They'd not talked about kids, not whilst the curse and its daily danger still loomed large in their lives. But maybe they one day would have? Or not, maybe it would have been just the two of them, happy and safe and in love, forever. She thought they'd have _forever_...

The pain is an onslaught that buckles her legs, has her sliding down the cupboards, has her bent and helpless, wracked by wave upon endless wave of unbearable loss.

She barely notices Wynonna pulling her roughly into an embrace, cradling her.

"Oh, dude. I know Nicole. I know."

 

Nearly half an hour later when she shows no sign of stopping crying,  Wynonna simply hauls her up, and puts her to bed.

She stays there for days, only getting up to go to the bathroom. She refuses food, starts refusing the whiskey even, she just lies there, and remembers, and cries and cries.

And now at nights, Wynonna holds her.

 

+++

 

But life, despite what it feels like to both of them, goes on.

The darker denizens of Purgatory don't respect a grieving period. In fact the smarter ones use it, opportunistically choosing this moment to launch their schemes. Wynonna resumes the fight, supported carefully by Dolls, and slightly more haphazardly, but still with a worried love in his eyes, by Doc.

Nicole eventually goes back to work too. Everyone is worried by how thin and worn she looks. But the first time she walks into the station, to an audience of silent, worried looks, she squares her shoulders, clears her throat, and says vaguely to everybody and nobody.

"She wouldn't want me just sitting around doing nothing whilst Purgatory goes to shit."

And walks to her desk, and sits down, and just gets on with it. And, remarkably, is at her full efficiency from the moment she's back.

 

A near semblance of normal life resumes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry.


	2. Living

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning - this chapter has actions in it which could be read as self-harm, and as suicidal ideation. I didn't mean to write the scenes that way, and I'm hoping they don't read that way. But I'm very very aware that everyone has their own spectrum of relation to these topics, and it's not my views on them that matter, it's yours. So if you need to be in anyway careful of this stuff, or frankly if you just don't want to read about it (really don't blame you), I suggest you skip this chapter. Which can basically be summed up as, Wynonna & Nicole have a hard time coming to terms with what's happened, and do some stupid stupid shit whilst grieving. You can easily skip all this to next chapter, where matters rather improve.
> 
> I'll put a couple of tags in the overall fic too to reflect too - real apologies for not doing that upfront. These scenes weren't in the original head-splurge concept, they just seemed to have written themselves in at the editing stage.

In the weeks and months that follow, Wynonna and Nicole resume work on the curse with a vengeance.

One having the single-minded determination of a mother, daughter and sister with nothing else left to lose, and the other a star cop whose one motivation in life outside of work is gone; not to mention both of them with the greatest of all scores to settle, they burn through the list with a restless and relentless determination. They are supported by Dolls, Doc and Jeremy of course, but it's the grieving women at the core of the fight, growing closer and closer, all their personality and methodological differences washed away to nothing in the fierce light of shared pain and vengeance.

In a little over six months they have enough revenants sent down they take the calculated risk of bringing Alice Michelle home. Gus moves out to the homestead for a while to ease the transition, and the willful toddler and her enormous stock of gaudy plastic toys takes over Waverly's room, breathing a third wave of life and light to the sorry space.

In a further year, the curse is ended for good. Nicole and Wynonna celebrate for Alice's sake - but mutedly. Everyone aware that what they've lost through the curse is too great for the end to be anything but more bitter than sweet.

 

* * *

 

After the curse is broken, something inside Wynonna herself seems to snap too. Feelings and thoughts shoved down and set aside for so long start bubbling to the surface. She deals with them - or rather, doesn't deal with them - in the traditional Earp way.

 

+++

 

Nicole is out at the homestead, babysitting Alice to give her mother a night off.

"Hey. Come on, short-stuff. Bedtime."

"No!"

Alice's favourite word, thrown with rebellious joy.

"It's past your bedtime actually, my little Alice-a-roo. C'mon now."

"No! No-no-no-no..."

"Alice! What would Mama say?"

"Nope!"

Nicole nearly fails to stifle a laugh. True, she thinks; very true. She hadn't realised how much of looking after kids was trying not to find what they say hilarious, and most of the time, agreeing with them.

"Okay. Here's the deal then. You don't have to go to sleep yet. But we'll sit in your bed, and I'll tell you another story about the adventures of Mama E and her amazing sister Waverly. How's that?"

Alice's obstinate face crumples into an adorably torn indecision. She loved these stories - nearly as much as Nicole loved telling them. She had to tone down the danger and violence of course, but there were still enough of a store to choose from most nights she babysat. Nicole loved the chance to talk about Waverly's smarts and bravery, and took a secret satisfaction in showing Alice her mother in a heroic light that she knew Wynonna herself never portrayed herself.

"Can have cuggles?" says Alice cunningly, as if she was doing Nicole a favour by making this offer.

Nicole puts out her hand and takes Alice's in a solemn handshake.

"Deal. You can have cuggles."

 

Upstairs and cuddled up together in Alice's bed, ten minutes into the story and the child is asleep, as Nicole had planned. She lays her carefully down and tucks her in securely, but for a second doesn't move. She's playing out the rest of the story she'd been telling in her head.

Thinking about how crazy, but smart Waverly's idea for putting down a revenant who could flicker themselves invisible at will was. How the plan had very nearly gone wrong, only Wynonna's quick thinking in a crisis turning it around. How worried Nicole had been, as always, and the relief she'd felt, as always, when it was all over and Waverly was safe for another day.

She remembered Waverly coming into the station, practically bouncing with the adrenaline of it all, beaming her satisfied and proud-of-herself smile at Nicole. The rush of relief and love Nicole would feel when she looked up from her desk to see that. The feeling when Nicole would break the resolution she made each and every time, and immediately ditch whatever she was working on, to duck into an empty office, corridor, kitchen, to fall together in a bone crushing hug. The feeling of pulling back, and looking down at Waverly. The feeling of them both smiling into a kiss...

She felt her phone in her pocket buzz, and start ringing. She climbs carefully out of Alice's bed, checking that she is still fast asleep, and answering the call of the unknown number as she closes the bedroom door carefully behind her.

"Nicole Haught. Yes? Right. _Shit_. What did she do?"

A long pause, the voice on the other end ranting at length. Nicole sighs.

"Okay. Right. I've got to get someone to watch her kid, but I'll be there soon as I can."

 

+++

 

Nicole pulls up to Pussy Willows in her cruiser, gets out, and walks up to the back entrance.

Wynonna is half-sat, half-lying, hunched up against a wall, not asleep but seemingly insensible with drink. The doorman standing next to her waves Nicole down.

"Is this yours?"

"Hi. Nicole Haught, Purgatory PD. I'm sorry sir, was she a lot of trouble?"

He glares down at Wynonna.

"We never served her this much, she must have brought something in. She's been hassling our customers, hassling our girls. Hey, dumbass! Wake up, your ride is here!"

He nudges Wynonna with his foot, who blearily looks up.

"Heeey! Haught-to-trot! Hey, do you remember that time here when - "

Wynonna's face crumples, suddenly confused, and Nicole is reminded of Alice's exact same expression, just an hour before.

"Hold on. Waaaait. Aren't you babysitting Alice?"

"Not right now I'm not. I'm babysitting her mother."

Wynonna looks up with such a hangdog look of worried confusion, aware there's something wrong with this picture but so far gone on drink she can't even work out what, that Nicole relents.

"Doc's watching her. Come on now Wynonna, let's get you home."

Nicole bends to lend her a hand, but Wynonna shoves her arm away as she practically climbs up the wall to her feet.

"I'm fine! Fine. And I don't want to go home. I'm gonna...heey, is Max still running his after hours lock-in? Let's go there!"

Nicole just looks at Wynonna, on her feet now, but swaying.

"Get in the car, Wy."

"Nope! I don't need a ride. I can walk!"

Nicole raises one skeptical eyebrow.

"Well, okay then. Be my guest."

Wynonna nods in exaggerated drunken satisfaction. And starts walking down the street, weaving from side to side. On her third meander to the left, her legs seems to get confused, picking up pace, trying to right her path but without the coordination to do so, leading first to a stumble and then a full length fall, lurching into a garage door with a dull metallic clang, and then crumpling to the floor.

"Owww...crap."

Nicole walks over, bends, and this time fights off Wynonna's weak resistance, yanking her to her feet.

"C'mon. Up you get."

She walks them over to her cruiser, opens the back door.

"Ohhh, the back seat huh Haught - _thing_ \- I'm just one of your criminals now am I?"

Nicole manhandles her in.

"So you can lie down. Okay, there you go."

She helps Wynonna lie down, then goes to the trunk, gets out the bucket she keeps back there for just this sort of arrestee, and wedges it in behind the seat in front of Wynonna's head.

"If you're gonna barf, please try to get it in that."

"Uhhh...please don't talk about barf. I don't feel so good."

Nicole takes off her jacket, and puts it over Wynonna, shivering now with the drink and her long sit on the cold ground.

"C'mon. Let's get you home. Get you safe."

Nicole says it to the night, as much as to Wynonna.

 

+++

 

It's only the first of many, many calls.

All Wynonna's friends and family say they understand, but ultimately get frustrated with her. She's got a child, they think. She shouldn't be behaving like this.

Jeremy suggests therapy, to be laughed out of the room by a scoffing Wynonna. Dolls appeals to her duty as the Earp heir, to stay alert to the wider danger Purgatory still offered, earning nothing but a middle finger. And Doc simply implores her to forget about her own issues, and just do what is right by their child, by god. He himself is still drinking heavily and sleeping around, still lost in the same old medicine for his own hundred years old pain. And so Wynonna doesn't even grant this one the dignity of a response.

And so one by one, everyone gets to, and then beyond, the end of their tether with her.

Everybody except Nicole.

"I don't get it, Nicole." Dolls shouts over Wynonna's drunken slurred singing, one time when they've both been required to physically drag Wynonna away from Shorty's. "You used to be the first to lose patience with her."

Nicole just shrugs, half carrying, half tugging Wynonna along.

"That was before."

 

+++

 

"Doc? What can I do for you?"

Nicole is at work, on a late shift when she sees Doc's number flash up. Pretty much knowing what a call from Doc at this hour will be.

"Officer Haught. Will you attend? Wynonna has been, ah, rather liberal with her libations again."

"On my way."

 

Nicole enters Shorty's, to find Wynonna at the bar, being held back by Doc, whilst berating the latest in a long line of sorely put-upon bar-hands. It's almost routine by now. But there seems to be an even wilder glint in her eyes tonight, something teetering on the edge about her.

"Nice evening for it, Wynonna. Now, how are you bothering these good people this time?"

Wynonna ignores Nicole and continues in her tirade, struggling in Doc's grasp, and still addressing the cowering youth behind the bar.

"Give me a _fucking_ drink! I'm a paying fucking customer! Hell, I've paid for half this fucking bar over the years!"

"Earp! Cut it out! We both know how this is going to end. Now you can come quietly, or you can - "

Wynonna whirls around, the sudden change of direction pulling her out of Doc's surprised grasp.

"Ohhh, it's Miss fucking perfect, Miss well-adjusted, here to save the day again and show me how well _she's_ dealing. Not looking after my kid this time, Haught? Teaching her right from wrong like you think her mother can't?"

Nicole's glance flicks to Doc. _Dolls_ , he mouths. She nods thanks. Rests her hands on her belt, patient, looking calm and steady at Wynonna.

"You're teaching her great, Wynonna. She's doing great. _You're_ doing great."

"Fuck...just fuck _off_. Shut up. I don't wanna - just shut _up_."

Wynonna holds up a hand to Nicole as if to ward off the words, looking down, to the side, turning away a little in a hunch, a flinch; as if the words of kind reassurance caused her physical pain.

"Come on, Earp. Let's go, huh?"

 

Nicole puts her in a cell to dry out. And goes back to her paperwork, sending a prayer of apology to Wynonna's younger sister.

All is calm for twenty minutes. But then Nicole grows twitchy. Something's wrong. Something feels wrong.

She gets up, straightening out the papers on her desk indecisively for a second, feeling a little foolish about needing to check again so soon. But knowing she does need to check.

She hears the sound before she gets to the cells. Running steps, then a thump; a pause, a scrape, then running steps again.

She rounds the corner to the cells just as she hears another thump, and sees the reason for it. Wynonna has thrown herself bodily into the wall, barely reacting to what looked like a bone-crunching impact, or her subsequent fall to the ground. She just pulls herself up on unsteady legs, seems to gather a shaky breath, and then she's running again, jumping, half turning in the air so she impacts with the concrete wall shoulder first, her body and head thrown against the wall next with the momentum of it, before she falls to the floor again.

" _Shit!_ Wynonna!"

Nicole fumbles the key in the lock for a second, and gets inside just as Wynonna is getting to her feet, even groggier this time, and starting off another run. Nicole grabs an arm, and twists her, and Wynonna is weakened enough that Nicole can use her momentum to turn her, to trip her, and she half tackles her, half guides her to the floor of the cell. Wynonna is struggling, malcoordinated and still drunk, but wrestling with all the fire and fury of her own self-loathing, and Nicole has to use all her height and training to get Wynonna in an immobilisation hold on the cold rough floor of the cell. She's got Wynonna's arms pinned, and her legs wrapped around Wynonna's to stop them kicking, and Wynonna is twisting her body left and right, but helplessly, realising she's held tight.

Wynonna looks up at Nicole, and meets her eyes fully for the first time in the evening. A look of a caged animal, rage and terror and pain.

She raises her head, closes her eyes, and Nicole realises what she's going to do a split second before she does it.

Nicole drops an arm, and whips her arm under Wynonna's head, just as Wynonna pulls it back down to the floor of the cell, hard as she can.

" _Jesus_ Wynonna! Fuck! _Jeez_ that hurt!"

Nicole's wrist took the impact, and Wynonna is so confused by the different sensation to what she was expecting and by her continued consciousness, that there's a lull in her struggling, enough of a lull for Nicole to grap Wynonna's momentarily free arm again, and wrestle both it and hers under Wynonna's head in case she tried again, her own held safely off to the side, out of headbutt range.

Wynonna stills for a second, and they lie there, panting. And with Wynonna out of all options; no more drink to be had, no fight left to fight, and Nicole there, steady and still like only Nicole Haught can be, there's finally nothing left but for Wynonna to talk.

 

"It's my fault."

Her voice is low, and defeated.

"No. Come on, Wy, we've talked about this. There was no way we could have - "

"Not that. I mean, yes that. I could've known. I shouldn't have let her go into town, that day - "

"Come off it. Your sister didn't take orders from either one of us. You know that."

"I could've done something. I could've done something more. But that's not what I mean. I mean all of it. All of it. All of it, _all_ of it, it's all my fault."

 _Okay. It's coming. How can I let her tell me?_ Nicole thinks, as she readjusts her grip, still pinning Wynonna, but a little more balanced now, a little more secure. She's stopped resisting for now, but Nicole isn't taking any chances.

"How do you mean?"

"If I hadn't have killed Daddy, Willa would've been the heir. She was _trained_ for this. She would've done it better. And - if I hadn't trusted her when she came back. God! If I'd have just listened to Waverly. She knew something was up. But I let her get close to me, and let her manipulate me. Shit, Nicole, she _shot_ you. You could've died."

"But I didn't."

Nicole murmers it, soothing.

"But you could have. Then I let her go off with fucking Bobo, man, and she lets a fuckin' sea-monster-hydra bat-shit-crazy borg-demon in. And I don't clear it up properly after, and Waverly gets gooed, and she's possessed. For like, two whole months? And I don't notice? And I'm an asshole to you when you do, and - it's my _fault_. My fault."

"We got through it, Wynonna."

"And I left! When Waverly was just a kid! I frickin' _left_ her, to this town full of _asshats_. Is this revenge? Am I being punished? It's my fucking fault, I fucking _left_ , and now _she's_ fucking left, and it's all my fault. It's all my _fault._ "

Wynonna's voice gets higher and shakier through the speech, until it tails off completely, and Nicole feels the body beneath her start to shake too. And so she takes her turn, starting off in an offhand manner, an almost casual tone, not lifting her head to meet Wynonna's eye. Trying not to scare her with kindness, like she had before.

"If you hadn't have shot your father, Waverly would've grown up in an abusive violent household, with her adult caregiver hating her and resenting her but too much of a chickenshit to tell her why. I can't believe how your sister came through everything she did and still became the person she was, but do you think she would've been if she'd have gone through that? Instead she had Gus, and Curtis, and grew up in love and care.

And if you hadn't have gone away, Waverly might not have had a chance to invent herself, and explore who she wanted to be. Yeah, she made mistakes - but they were _her_ mistakes. Everybody's gotta make mistakes. You gave her that chance. And when you came back - you always say it was all me, but it wasn't, Wy. I saw her changing into who she was, even before we were together. That was as much you as it was me.

And when Willa was back - if you and Dolls hadn't have been there, the whole town would've been poisoned. And you were prepared to risk everything to save my life, just for Waverly. Yeah? Did I ever thank you for that?"

Wynonna is sobbing, now, openly. She's still struggling, almost for the sake of show, against Nicole's hold. And so Nicole doesn't let go. But she leans and twists a shoulder, and Wynonna takes her up on the silent offer, wiping her eyes and nose on Nicole's uniform.

"And you killed the demon, stopped it from getting in the triangle. And then, yeah, okay there was a bit of goo, but you sorted that too. You got Mictian out of Waverly, put it down. _You_ did that, Wynonna. And you saved her, god, how many times? Over and over and over again.

We live in a shitty town, Wynonna. And your sister was far too good for it. But _none_ of it is your fault. None of it."

Nicole's words are a fierce whisper, into Wynonna's hair. Because somewhere along the line, Wynonna's struggles have stopped, and Nicole's hold has slipped from technical to the simply human, and the two women are just lying on the floor of an open jail cell, holding each other up against the weight of an unfathomable loss.

"I got you, Earp. I got you."

 

+++

 

It's not quite the last call-out Nicole gets like that. But those nights get rarer and rarer, until one day Nicole realises she can't even remember the last time it happened.

 

* * *

 

Wynonna surprises everyone, not least herself, by eventually settling down and taking to the job of being a full time mother and carer to Alice like a duck to water. She can’t keep away from mischief completely; but now it finds a slightly healthier outlet, in her mischievously aiding and abetting the exploits of her beautiful daughter, who as she grows shows herself to be the equal of her mother in spirit and her aunt in intelligence. It makes for a dangerous combination; with Alice running rings around the children of her own age, gathering her own ragtag band of slightly older friends who menace and charm the townsfolk in equal measure. Much to her mother’s wicked delight.

The town’s parents are split into two fiercely opposing camps, the small number who get the elder and younger Earp's spirit of no-bullshit rebellion, and who take no small amount of satisfaction of her needling winding up of the much larger camp who don’t.

 

She's supported financially by Doc's larger and larger takings at Shorty's, a father's responsibilities managing to draw out a serious and business side of him that nothing else yet had. And Aunty Nicole is such a frequent visitor Alice seems to get confused, saying proudly to the little boy of a lesbian couple in her elementary school class that she, too, has two mommies.

Wynonna laughs and gives Nicole shit for that, telling her she needs to get her niece's queer education in order, and that she of all children should know that family comes in all sizes and shapes.

 

Because Dolls is around too, as often as Doc, and soon, more often. Whilst Doc never lets Wynonna down in providing for her, and is a loving if eccentric father to Alice, Dolls is present and reliable in a way that Doc, much longer in the tooth and with his own demons still to fight, just can't be.

So when Dolls starts emerging from Wynonna's room in the mornings too, it's really the last piece, not the first, in their relationship.

 

They never marry. Wynonna is not the marrying type. But they add a brother for Alice, and they both know that that commitment is as good as, if not better than, a ring.

 

* * *

 

Nicole has long since stepped up to Sheriff. She's good at it; moreover it gives her an excuse to further embody her work, and her role in the town as an important somebody. It also gives her frequent excuse to attend functions in the evenings; and with her days off spent giving Wynonna and Dolls a break with the kids, her life stays pretty full.

She eventually does start dating again. She has fun, sometimes relationships too, with a series of kind, fun, and for the most part completely smitten women. With one there's even talk of marriage.

But one by one, they all eventually leave her. Each realising in their own time that they are always going to be the losers in the impossible competition with Nicole's first, and one true love.

She's too honest, or possibly stupid, to lie to them.

Yes, I do care for you, she tells them. No, I don't love you like I loved her, she says.

 

+++

 

She wins medal after medal for bravery in the line of duty.

There's plenty of opportunity for that in Purgatory of course, even if the bemused officials in the national police department who award them don't understand that, or why this one officer in this tiny rural backwater seems to so frequently find herself in the position of demonstrating heroic bravery. But Nicole has always been brave, and always been prone to getting bodily in the way of danger, so her colleagues and most of her friends in Purgatory are exasperated, but mostly proud, when she ends up in hospital time and again.

 

But Wynonna sees through it. And one day, when they're in their early forties, and Nicole is lying in hospital bed, reading some papers from work, and ignoring the pain of a shot this time passed right through her shoulder, she calls her on it.

 

“You're doing it again, Haught.”

“What are you talking about, Earp.”

Their relationship is too deep, too familial by now for either of them to need to worry about politeness. So Wynonna's tone is brusque, and Nicole's is bored, not even looking up from her work.

With Wynonna's next statement however, she lets the papers fall to her lap, and looks up.

“Trying to get yourself killed.”

There's a long silence, in which they just hold each other's eyes.

“I'm not trying to - ”

Wynonna raises her eyebrows, tilts her head in an exaggerated challenge, just daring Nicole to finish the denial.

Further long seconds pass. And eventually Nicole shakes her head, and looks away.

“I just miss her so much, Wynonna. I know how long it's been, and I should be over her by now. But I'm not.”

“Yeah. I know. Me too.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“But Nicole. We've been through this. She'd want you to be happy. She'd want you to live.”

Nicole casts the papers aside, frustrated.

“But that's the thing. How can I? You know I struggle to believe in the afterlife, Wynonna. But with everything I've seen in Purgatory, I don't know - I mean, we know there's a hell, so just logically there's a good chance there's a heaven, too, right? And if there is, Waverly for sure will be in it.”

Wynonna raises her eyebrows in acknowledgement; this much is obvious.

“And so what if she's there, waiting for me? What if I'm living this life of mine, when she doesn't get to live hers? What if I do manage to hold onto someone for more than a couple of years - what then? What, say there's an afterlife, and we all get in, who will I be with? I'd hope to be with your sister of course, but what if I'm with someone who would want to be with me? Where does that leave them?”

“Well, shit. I dunno Haught, I cut a lot of classes back in Purgatory High. I must have missed the one on practical dilemmas in the application of philosophies of the afterlife.”

It's Nicole's turn to roll her eyes, but Wynonna's gentle teasing stops her at the brink of somewhere. And when Wynonna goes on, it brings her back.

“I get it, Nicole, I really do. I don't know though - don't you think that if there is a heaven, they'd find a way to let her be happy there? But it's more than that. The kids need you. _Here_. Purgatory needs you. You know I hate saying it, but - ”

“Yeah yeah Earp, I know it. You need me too.”

Her tone is dry, teasing, too. But after a long minute, it drops back to a whisper.

“I just miss her. I really really miss her.”

 

* * *

 

She's little more careful, after that.

But only a little. And one day, a few years off retirement, her luck finally runs out.

As she lies in the back alley behind the store, the clamour of alarm bells fading into the background of her perception as blood leaks through her fingers, clamped over the gunshot wound to her chest, she has a grateful realisation.

It's not scary, dying.

She had worried so many times over the years if Waverly was scared. She hadn't seen any sign of fear in her eyes that awful day, only acceptance; but she couldn't know for sure what Waverly was feeling.

But now she's given insight into it, now she understands that this is her own time, she feels only an acceptance, and almost a grateful one. She feels glad to have had the life she's had, and not sad or scared that it was ending. There's a calm, almost warm feeling that settles on her as she registers her breath getting shorter, and the midday sky above getting darker as her vision fades.

And the knowledge that Waverly likely hadn't been scared, and that at least she'd been able to be with her and comfort her in her final moments, is the final piece of grieving she needs to do.

She wishes Waverly was here for this, too. But she chokes out the same words, as her eyes fall shut for the last time. Hoping that wherever Waverly was, she'd somehow hear.

“I love you so much, Waverly Earp. You made my life complete. Even with everything. You made my life complete.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So so sorry.
> 
> It does get better, from here on in. I'm going to get the next chapter up in a couple of days I reckon, this is such a shitty place to leave them (and you) hanging.


	3. Rebirth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a tiny wee chapter. But storywise, this one kinda feels like it should stand on its own.
> 
> I *may* have gone a little overboard with the emotions in this one. But I reckoned, after the last couple of chapters...

Nicole slowly awakens into awareness.

She is stood outside at the Earp homestead, facing the house. She can feel warm sun on her back, and a light breeze on her face. There are birds calling in the sky, high overhead.

She looks down, puzzled to see no gunshot wound. In fact, she looks different all over. She's as slim as she was in her youth; wearing tight blue jeans and a wide necked shirt she vaguely remembers. She raises a hand and sees the skin smooth, the scars and scrapes of a lifetime of physical altercations vanished, fingernails manicured short rather than bitten down to the quick. The vague ache in her lower back that has been a constant companion for the past few years is gone, and her eyes feel clear and keen. She feels -  _good_.

A feeling, no, a knowledge comes to her suddenly, from she doesn't know where.

_You're safe._

She looks fully around her, searching for clues. Perhaps she's dreaming, perhaps this is the final givings-out of a dying brain.

_No,_  comes the knowledge. _You've passed. This is after._

She frowns. But what is a ghost to do.

She walks up the steps of the homestead, seeing the wood warmly varnished and worn smooth, the often broken windows mended, and when she pushes open the ajar door and steps inside, the interior clean, warm, and everything looking in its right place.

_Everything is okay, here_ , comes the understanding.

And then everything is more than okay.

Because, walking into the room, nose buried in a book, sipping from a steaming cup of tea, comes Waverly Earp.

 

+++

 

Nicole is struck silent and rooted to the floor with shock, but Waverly must catch the door open out of the corner of her eye and she looks up, and when she sees Nicole she double takes, startles, tea sloshing over the side of the cup. She puts it quickly down on the floor, the book too, forgotten, and straightens, her hand on her heart, her eyes never leaving Nicole.

Her face goes on some kind of a journey. The startled shock flickers through to an understanding, which then morphs through pride into a smile, which then grows happier and happier until her face and eyes are shining with pure joy.

“ _Nicole._ " she breathes. "You  _made_ it. I knew you would.”

It seems somehow fitting that the first words Nicole says to Waverly Earp's face in thirty years are pure confusion.

“What - what's going on? Where are we?”

Waverly smiles, a fond amusement in her eyes.

“You know. Or you will. Wait for it, baby."

Nicole frowns again, but then that knowledge comes on her again.

_This is after. This is the place where everything is alright._

Waverly beams, as she sees the realisation hit Nicole.

“And - and you've been waiting for me? All this time?”

Waverly hasn't moved since she saw Nicole, and they've been talking across the room. But with this, she rounds the couch, and takes a few steps closer.

“Sort of. Time here doesn't move the same, I don't think. I didn't start counting for a while, but it's been - about four months, I think?”

Nicole shakes her head, dumbfounded. Just stares at Waverly, taking her in. She's wearing a long denim skirt, and a white embroidered gypsy shirt, loose around her shoulders, showing off her smooth tanned skin. Her hair is pulled back in a simple braid: she looks young, Nicole vaguely thinks. And then mentally kicks herself - of course she is. She just looks the young age at which she'd died.

And Nicole can't actually believe how beautiful she is, in the flesh like this. She'd spent a lifetime staring at photos of Waverly, but they were still, and frozen in time, and eventually so over-familiar she stopped really seeing them at all.

But here Waverly was in front of her, seemingly living, and breathing, and so so beautiful. Her eyes sparkling, and the crinkle of laughter lines, and the shine of her hair, and the warmth and realness of her body...she tilted her head a little, smiling at Nicole with that mix of excitement, love, and a knowing affection that Nicole used to just drown in, back when -

Nicole closes her eyes a second and takes a deep breath. Trying to re-orient herself in this place and time.

“It's a lot to take in, right? Here, come on, sit down. I can make you tea? They do run to that, here.”

Waverly's tone is careful, and caring, but has that Waverly Earp humour in it, a little dry, a lot generous. And hearing her speak to her like this, hearing her speak to _her_ like this, after all these years…

“I'm old” blurts out Nicole.

Waverly hesitates. “I know. It's been a long time for you, huh?”

Nicole finally sits on the couch. Raises her eyebrows, takes a deep breath, and then shaking her head, blows it out again in reply. There's not really words to describe how long.

Waverly pauses, then kneels in front of her. She looks up at Nicole, steadily. Goes on, in the softest voice yet.

“I'm so sorry, Nicole. It must have been so hard. I've been given - well, you'll get to know this. It's super weird. You sort of get to know things about what's happening with people. Sort of like seeing them? Only you don't see them, it's just like you'll know, right?

Anyway. I know it was really hard for you. But I know you kept going, and I know you helped my sister, and you never gave up on Purgatory. I'm so so proud of you, Nicole.”

Waverly is looking up at Nicole, her expression a little lost in love and admiration. Like she'd looked at her when they first got together.

Nicole has a sudden awful thought.

“I dated. After you.”

Waverly laughs. “Oh, baby. Of course you did. That's okay, I didn't expect you to join a nunnery.”

“But I never loved anyone the way that I loved you.”

Nicole's words fall out in a tumble and rush, and with them the air thickens between them. Waverly speaks quieter, now.

“I guess I knew that, too. And - I'm sorry. I wish you could have been happier. But selfishly - ”

She shrugs, embarrassed, and for the first time, looking a little unsure.

And that brings out Nicole's first, real smile. A smile of love, and reassurance, and one that is gradually beginning to believe. They look into each other's eyes; and they hardly need the words at all.

“Waverly Earp.”

“Yes?”

“Are we in heaven?”

“Yes my love. We are.”

“And you're here? You're really here?”

The smile is back. And a definitive nod.

“Yep.”

“And - and - you still want me?”

Waverly bursts out laughing.

“Oh, sweetie! No, they brought you to heaven to meet me and have me tell you I've found a nice young archangel to run away with. _Yes_ I still want you. I have always wanted you.”

She hesitates, then. And a hint of fear can be heard when she goes on.

“Do you still want me, though? It's different for you. It's been a long time…”

Nicole speaks without thinking, and the emotion and truth of what she has to say hits them both hard.

“Thirty years, and I have only ever wanted you. Only you.”

 

+++

 

With those words spoken and heard, they're still for a long, long moment. Nicole sits motionless on the couch, and Waverly kneels in front of her, and both are just looking at each other, drinking each other in. Loving each other, and wanting each other.

They still haven't touched, the air between them thick with it. Waverly brings one hand up to rest on the couch besides Nicole, who swallows, hard.

“Are you ready, baby?”

“Uh-huh. I think so. Yeah.”

Waverly carefully, slowly, moves her hand, and rests it on Nicole's knee.

Nicole is hit with a flood of sensation. Her eyes fall shut, and she can feel the warmth of the touch radiating out from that spot, sparking over her skin like dancing electricity, filling up her bones with the knowledge of it: _Waverly_ , sings her skin, _Waverly_ , shivers her body; _Waverly_ , beats her heart.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

Nicole is breathing shakily, and her words come out choked. She forces herself to open her eyes, reconnects with Waverly's steadying gaze.

Waverly moves her thumb, just very gently.

“Stop? Or go on?”

“Go on. Please, Wave.”

Nicole can hear the desperation in her own voice. She is gripping tight onto the material of the couch with both hands, because in truth, she doesn't know if she can take any more. It feels so good, but it feels so _strong_. It's been so _long_ …

Waverly rises up on her knees, until her face is nearly level with Nicole's. Slowly, looking deep into Nicole's eyes, checking she's with her, that she's okay with this, she brings her other hand to lie up against Nicole's face.

“Uhhh…”

“Okay? You okay?”

“ _Yeah_.”

Nicole wants to close her eyes again, to better concentrate on the surging sensation of it all. But she wants to watch Waverly more, Waverly who seemingly is having almost as great an emotional reaction to the touch as she is. Her eyes are a little glassy with unshed tears, and her head is tilted again, and there is an ache in the loving look she's giving Nicole.

Nicole brings her own hand up to cover Waverly's against her cheek; and when after a moment she starts to run it up Waverly's arm, first encircling her slender wrist, then sliding down and then up her arm, until it's resting on her shoulder, she sees Waverly visibly shiver.

“God...I missed you so _much_ , Nicole.”

“Come up here. Come sit…”

Waverly does, sitting next to Nicole on the couch, close, turned to each other, leaning in, but not yet touching. And this time Nicole is the first to connect, reaching out and just laying a simple hand on Waverly's thigh. They are both breathing short, shallow breaths, as they resume the careful exploration of touch and sensation, alternating between looking at and to each other, seeking reassurance and permission for every touch and caress.

At one point Waverly pushes a hand through Nicole's hair, back to the shoulder length wavy style of her youth, and Nicole's can't breathe for a second; the memory of this touch and all it meant overwhelming her. Waverly sees, and stops the movement, but holds her hand there in the hair at the nape of her neck, just watching her love carefully. And when she sees she's okay, she just scratches her fingertips lightly at her scalp.

"I'm sorry. Too much?"

"No. I just forgot what that feels like. How much I like that."

Waverly breathes a laugh. "You do. I remember."

Nicole rests a hand on Waverly's hip, not moving, not yet, just drowning in the knowledge that she's but a short movement, just a nudge from slipping under a shirt to find bare skin. Waverly notices that Nicole is looking down at her breasts, her mouth hanging a fraction open, a small frown line Waverly recognises from days and nights spent in bed on Nicole's brow. She laughs, indulgently.

“Okay, there?” she teases.

“Sorry. Sorry.”

“Don't be. I've missed you looking at me like that. You - you can touch me, if you want.”

Nicole reaches out a shaky hand, and runs just the back of her fingers around the outside of the curve of a breast. Both of them draw deep affected breaths, and Nicole drops her hand again.

“Okay. Okay. Slowly, baby. We've got all the time in the world.”

 

They do. And so they are. Slowly, touch by touch, breath by breath, they get closer and closer, until they are leaning together, heads resting on each other's, breathing each other's air, both their hands lying on each other wherever they fall. But it's not enough, and Nicole needs more, needs full contact, and so she takes the initiative, and twists and pulls them down, asking in a low murmur as she does so, _yeah?_   Hearing, as if Waverly's shift with her in the movement wasn't answer enough, an almost desperate whisper of  _uh huh, yeah, uh huh_.It's awkward on the short couch, their legs tangled and folded and hanging half off the couch, but somehow, finally, they find a way to hold each other, find a way to lie with their bodies fully in touch.

Face to face, and holding each other close, the emotions wash over them stronger than ever. Waverly watches Nicole carefully, sees how much she needs the next step, but how afraid of it she is too.

“Nicole?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

Waverly waits, looking into Nicole's eyes, still seeing a trepidation there. Waverly understands. It's only been the turn of a single season for her, and that has felt like forever. It's been a lifetime for Nicole. So she waits, and waits. Until she's completely sure she sees not just permission there, but need.

There are tears in Nicole's eyes, when Waverly leans forward the final distance, and presses her kiss to Nicole's lips.

She kisses Nicole, soft and long. And Nicole kisses her back the same. And then they're kissing each other, and then, unlike their hesitant and careful touches, their kisses quickly grow firm. Dry just for a second before lips are parting and the kiss deepens, and they are kissing their connection and love harder and harder, and their arms tighten around each other, and their tongues tussle and touch and kiss love back and forth, til they're breathless, whimpers of complete overwhelming sensation escaping them both in the fractional gaps of the wet, desperate kisses.

Nicole's eyes are closed tight, and with sight gone she can feel everything else she's experiencing a hundred times stronger. The kiss. God, her _kiss_. The feeling of Waverly's warm soft body arching into her own. The grasp of her hands at her back, fingers clenching at her shirt, tangling in her hair. The strength and privilege of holding her. The scent and taste of her...it makes her dizzy, it overwhelms her, it is like nothing else in the _world_ …

 

In her darkest of times, and only then after twenty or so years had passed after Waverly's death, Nicole had wondered if she'd imagined the whole thing. If the connection and love between them had been as powerful as she thought she remembered it.

Nicole knew now she'd not been wrong. And a lump grows in her throat, and she can't kiss anymore, and then before she can stop it, she's broken the kiss, because she's crying.

Crying for the thirty years of her loss. Crying with relief that she wasn't wrong, that they really had this. Crying with barely believing joy that they've somehow been given a second chance.

 

And crying for the first time in long, lonely years, in warmth and in comfort, in what feels like the first step of healing, as Waverly strokes and kisses her tears away, holds her close, rocks her in her loving arms.

 


	4. Afterlife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here be philosophising.
> 
> And, well, other stuff. M? E? I never really know. The latter, possibly.
> 
> Anyway. Certainly not in front of your salad.

Waverly eventually does make her that tea.

And when evening falls, they move to bed, the better to hold each other.

But they don't make love. Not that first night; and not the next morning either, waking up together wide eyed in wonder, both taking long minutes to believe and reassure each other with both words and touch that it's not just a dream.

Neither do they get that far the next night; nor the next.

And then, well, they just, _don't_. It's still too much; and they are both strangely shy about it, nervous about taking that step again after they had both been through so much. They both sense that neither of them are exactly the people they were, and so although it's clear they both still love each other, and all the attraction is still there, they implicitly understand that they need to really get to know each other again before they can renew their physical connection.

So instead they just kiss, and touch; and they talk and talk and talk. And sure, sometimes their idle and loving kisses start to deepen, and that old warmth builds until it's almost a fire of love and need, and they'll find themselves on the edge of something, touching heedlessly, breathing hard, lost in desire for each other.

But then one or the other will hesitate, or pull back a fraction; and they'll look deep into each other's eyes, and there's an understanding that passes there. And then there's softer kisses, and a lean of one forehead on the other, and they will readjust, and settle down, and just hold each other.

"There's no hurry," Nicole might whisper.

"You've got me for forever, Nicole," Waverly might reassure.

And always, they'd say the one thing that would remain forever true.

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

 

+++

 

That first night, the first time they curl up to sleep together, Waverly had without thinking turned on her side and shuffled back, and Nicole had just as automatically curled around her, pressed up against her from top to toe, the way they’d slept every night back in their lives together.

Nicole had let out a shuddering sigh at the incredible feeling of it; and heard Waverly do the same. And then hears her breath start to hitch, and then a sniffle, and then feels her love start to shake with small quiet sobs.

“Hey, hey, baby. What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong. Everything's right. This - this just feels so _good._ ”

Nicole tightens her arms around her, kisses a shoulder, and lets Waverly let out the emotion. She soon calms; but doesn't turn from the comfort of where she lies. In the soothing dark of the night, and in the safety of Nicole's arms, she explains, in a confessional whisper.

“I don't think you're supposed to be able to be truly afraid here. But I was. I was so scared for you, Nicole. I was so scared that you'd not be coping.”

Nicole just rests her forehead against Waverly's back. She's not sure how to answer that. She's not sure if she really had.

“But - oh god. I don't know why I'm here, this is so awful. Because I was scared too…”

“Go on. It's okay baby, go on.”

Waverly's voice is a tremorous whisper.

“I was scared that you _would_ cope. That you'd mourn, but move on, and forget about me. That I was imagining - _this_.”

She'd illustrated that last inarticulate word with a squeeze of the hand Nicole had around her waist.

Nicole shifts, pulls at Waverly, gesturing for her to turn around in her arms, until they're face to face again. Nicole raises her hand, and caresses Waverly. A long, gentle touch, from pushing a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, then curling her hand and caressing down her jawline, then touching her shoulder, trailing down her arm, finally holding her hand, and squeezing.

Waverly is staring at her, tears back in her eyes, like the woman in front of her was the whole world, both in heaven and on earth. Nicole leans forward, and kisses her, softly, putting all her love into it, showing Waverly that she understood what she'd meant. Showing her -  _this_. Whatever this was.

“No. We didn't imagine it. I coped, kind of. But I never, ever forgot about you. I never stopped thinking about you. I never stopped loving you.”

 

Waverly cries, and Nicole holds her tight in her arms, and that only makes Waverly cry harder.

 

* * *

 

Over the days that follow, Waverly explains a little of her experience and understanding of the place they find themselves in. It's definitely a heaven, of sorts. Everything is easier than in life, everything the ideal and best version of how things were before.

But there still seem to be rules. Nights are still cold, and the town is still a drive away, and people seem to be able to be as genuinely kind to each other, or not, as their personalities and actions allow.

Because yes, there are other people here, she tells Nicole. She explains that both Shorty and her uncle Curtis are here; in fact that's how she's spent a lot of her time, catching up with them both. First in front of, and then soon back behind the bar at Shorty's, helping out with shifts, serving drinks to drinkers who now had no reason not to opt for a midday beer.

 

Each of the three of them discovered that it was possible to ask things of the mysterious understanding that came to them. Because Waverly and Curtis had both asked immediately on arrival for their loved ones, and why they weren't with them.

_Because it's not time yet_ , they'd grown to understand. _But it will be, soon_. And they were given to understand time moved differently here, and they wouldn't have too long to wait.

Sure enough Gus had duly arrived too, a few weeks after Waverly had. She and Curtis had made sure to seek Waverly out, bearing news of Wynonna and Dolls, of their child little Mikey, of Alice's scrapes and escapades, and finally and at length stories of Nicole's progress and her upstanding role in the community.

And then they'd disappeared off for weeks together. ‘Reconnecting’, Waverly had surmised to Shorty. Oh yes, he'd replied. You should have known them in their youth. Boy, did they like to reconnect.

Waverly had shoved him, giggling. But flushed, at the idea that she might get this chance too, with Nicole.

 

+++

 

Shorty of course was a lifelong bartender, and as such had a range of friends and acquaintances that ran from the saintly to the rather less than angelic. Several people he'd known that had passed were here, but some seemingly weren't.

He'd mused on their fate with Curtis and Waverly, and they'd all shared theories, but in the end Shorty was the only one brave enough to ask.

So one night he thinks, as clear as he can: If this is the place for the good people, what happens to those who were...less good? Those like old Jimmy; cantankerous when sober and downright mean when drunk? Or lil' Lauretta, former good-time girl latterly in love only with the bottle, to the detriment first of her own health and sanity, and then her kids', when the housekeeping started disappearing over the bar too; until Shorty had finally cut her off for good.

Sure, maybe there were reasons why they weren't here. But, he tried to ask the voice, surely they didn't deserve - the other option?

 

He reported back the next day, leaning on the bar as Waverly pours out a beer for Curtis, grinning wickedly as he explains.

"Guy's got a sense of humour. You know how it is, it's not words exactly. But if it was, it was somethin' like 'do you think we got time to be putting on this sort of personal afterlife for just anybody?'. I dunno. I'm not sure if it's nothin' at all. Or just someplace - grey."

"The Asphodel Meadows, maybe." Waverly had interjected, thoughtfully.

"The ass-hole what?"

She and Curtis dissolved into giggles at Shorty's mishearing and puzzled, slightly offended look. Waverly had grinned at Curtis, who'd volunteered for the explanation.

"The Asphodel Meadows - according to the Ancient Greeks, the bad people went to Tartarus - hell. Most people, the normal people, went to the Asphodel Meadows. It's safe, and sunlit, but covered in mist, and folk mostly have no memory of who they've been. It's only the best, mostly demigods and heroes who had proved themselves in battle - "

"According to the written record of the belief system which would of course have been filtered through the patriarchal gatekeeping of written sources of the time and not taking into account the very likely view of wider society including women and children who would've had their own conception of heaven and what a good life was that got you there." interrupted Waverly.

" - and good people of all sorts, thank you Waverly Pankhurst, who went to Elysium. Heaven."

"Hmm." Shorty had grunted. "Funny sort of heaven where I'm stuck for eternity pouring beer for your wrinkly-ass face, McCready."

They'd laughed. Despite his words, Shorty was in fact entirely happy with the simple heaven that was a clean bar without creditors to worry about or bar-fights smashing up the glassware every other week. And so with their question reasonably answered, they'd let the philosophical drop, and moved back to easy gossip and chat.

 

+++

 

But Waverly was more than aware they had only covered two of three likely afterlives. And her curiosity, and worry, had grown.

 

She'd had a mixed relationship with her father. Or at least the man that for most of her life she'd believed was her father. He was - he hadn't exactly been a _good_ man.

She'd spent a life-time trying not to think ill of the dead, true.

But still and all.

 

Maybe the life he'd led as a Sheriff would cancel all that out, she'd wondered. Maybe he used to be good? He had after all been trying to protect his family, that time he'd made the deal with Bobo. It was a stupid and weak decision that had close to ruined all three of his daughter's lives, and in fact hastened the end of two of them. But his motivations in some ways had been good. Did he really deserve an eternity of suffering? Did Willa?

She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer. But one night, tired, but restless and unable to sleep, desperately missing the grounding influence of Nicole, her need for knowledge had won out against her fear of what the answer would be. So she'd asked.

What about the bad people, she'd asked. What happens to them?

_The truly bad are punished. Those who knew they were doing great wrong and did it anyway, are punished. But only for a time. Then they are let to their peace._

Waverly had let that sink in.

And then she'd thought of Rosita. Then of Fish, Levy. They had been men once, and they hadn't all been truly evil. Even Bobo had been a good man, once.

And Revenants?

_Them too_ , had come the understanding. _But they weren't supposed to come back. They were supposed to be let to rest. Your sister and your love did a good thing ending that._

 

+++

 

When she'd recounted all of this metaphysical learning to Nicole, she'd just nodded approvingly.

"Quite right too. People do their crime, they do their time, then they're let go."

Waverly had chuckled at the incongruity, and yet what seemed to her like the absolute rightness of Nicole giving her seal of approval on the workings of the eternal afterlife.

"Are you trying to tell me that the great almighty is basically a lawman?" Waverly had teased.

"Well, all the best people are."

Nicole had said this with a wink, and something of her old confidence and swagger. And Waverly had had to bite back a smile, feeling a flutter both in her heart, and, well, somewhere else entirely.

 

* * *

 

Nicole and Waverly spend most days taking long walks together, getting to know each other again.

 

It’s spring, here, and they rise most mornings early, with the birds in full song, and head out. Sometimes with picnic blanket, lunch, and a destination in mind, sometimes just to see where their legs will take them.

And with each day, they remember each other, and the reasons why they had first fallen in love. But also get to know the people they’ve become since.

 

Nicole knows that the grief has changed her. She actually thinks in many ways, it’s changed her for the better. She’d become a little kinder, a little less prone to judgement. Both when it came to Wynonna and their circle of eccentric friends, and to the perpetrators of crime she spent her working life fighting against.

She’d experienced an extreme of emotion, and lived through such depths, that it had given her some degree of perspective of just how far a person might find themselves able to go, given less in the way of support and more in the way of opportunity for bad behaviour. So whilst always maintaining and upholding the code of the law that she lived her life by, she grew a little softer in its application. A little more understanding of the world that her perpetrators moved through.

Her deputies had noticed, and started to call her Nedley Junior. And she’d not minded that one bit.

 

And of course, the simple pain of it all had weighed her down. She had always run slightly to the serious anyway, but living with loss for so long had definitely left a mark. In their long walks, Waverly notices but doesn’t comment on the fact that Nicole is a quieter than she used to be, laughs a little less easily now.

So Waverly just keeps up and re-doubles her free and wide-ranging observations on the world around them and the world they’ve left; happily taking the weight of conversation for the both of them. When she sees a comment bring an unconscious and genuine smile to Nicole’s face, her heart clenches in quiet satisfaction and love. And when Nicole falls silent, and brooding, Waverly understands, and gives her the space she needs. Just takes a hand as they walk through the open grassland; tangling her fingers in Nicole’s, feeling the answering squeeze back.

 

Nicole learns that Waverly is a little different now, too. She’s always admired, no, been in awe of her intellect, her curiosity, her desire to understand the world, and through understanding, better it.

But there had been an edge to all that, back then. The edge that kept Waverly perpetually anxious about her sister and their shared fate. The edge that, sometimes, kept Nicole out of the loop, as Waverly struggled with the conflicting demands of all of her many identities. Little Waverly the town sweetheart; Earp - by birth or not; Waverly the brainiac Black Badge consultant; baby girl little sister; and last and before she could even assume the role, Aunty Waverly.

They talked openly about all that, now, and Waverly assured Nicole over and over again that the most important identity she had of all back when she was living was, Waverly Earp, _Nicole's._ And with the benefit of the wisdom and generosity to herself she’s gained over her life, Nicole found that she could believe this now, in a way that she sometimes had struggled to, before.

In this place, and with Nicole finally here with her, all of Waverly’s hard edges were smoothed away. Waverly already knew, in the vague terms that this place allowed her, that the curse had ended, and that Wynonna had settled down into the family life.

But as Nicole recounted the details of all this, she could almost visibly see the fire that burned inside Waverly lessen, and fade to a simple warmth, as she learned about Alice’s antics, and the old head on young shoulders that was little Mikey, his father’s steadiness and patience inherited and providing the perfect sibling combination for his older sister’s headstrong and sometimes willful ways.

There was maybe something too about knowing the answer to humanity’s greatest philosophical question that seemed to ground Waverly. Nicole watched with that dazed admiration she remembers from when she’d first met Waverly, as she turns her curiosity out to whatever this world has to offer again; pointing out wild flowers on their walks, sharing their common, Latin, and First Nation names, listing off lore on their use, and rambling with idle thoughts of where they'd best grow around the homestead. She'd practically been falling over herself to share with Nicole her excitement at all the time she has now for learning; mentioning off-hand that she’d already added ancient Greek to the suite of languages she had on call, and had been playing around with which of the dozen history or language courses she wanted to focus on next.

As they walked, and talked, and with Waverly’s every easy laugh, every insightful observation, each touch of her flitting hands on her hand or arm or back, Nicole fell in love all over again.

 

+++

 

One day, the height of summer now, and they are lying idle and easy on their picnic blanket. They are in the middle of the grassy uplands that lay way in the back of the homestead, halfway along a trail that led to the first risings of hills hinting at the serious peaks in the distance.

They are warm in the hazy afternoon sun, well fed with the over-catered lunch that Waverly had packed and Nicole had carried, outwardly grumbling at the weight but secretly delighting in the chance to show off a little for Waverly. And they were both just the tiniest hint tipsy after sharing a half-sized bottle of wine with their picnic.

Waverly was lying back, head resting on Nicole's rucksack, holding a book with one hand, and with the other gently tangling and combing through Nicole's hair. Who was doing nothing at all, just enjoying the warmth of the sun and the feel of Waverly's touch, and the comfort of her own pillow, in the form of the bare skin of Waverly's stomach.

They lay like that a long time, quiet and content in each other's simple company. Then Nicole reshuffles her position to lie on her side, squinting as she opens her eyes against the bright sun. Unthinkingly she turns her head, and presses a light kiss to the slightly sweaty, warm skin she'd been resting on.

"I love summer. Crop-top weather." she observes, happily.

Getting no response, she looks up, to see Waverly's still holding her book, but Nicole notices it held at an angle rather ill-suited to reading. She raises her head to get a clearer view, and sees Waverly's eyes closed, her beautiful raised-eyebrows half smile just radiating a surprised sensation. She grins, mischievously, and leans down to kiss Waverly's abs again, firmer and more deliberate this time.

Waverly drops her book to the grass, forgotten. So Nicole kisses her stomach again, and then again, and then she can't help herself but taste the salt of Waverly's sweat.

" _Ohh_..."

The exhalation was quiet, but Nicole knew the tone of it. Remembered it, from all those years ago. She smiles again, with pure happiness and love, and a growing buzzing warmth spreading throughout her own body; and she turns fully on her front, and kisses a long, slow path, all the way up to Waverly's lips.

 

+++

 

They'd started hesitantly. Nicole had been worried about their public location, until Waverly had reassured her.

"We're miles from anywhere Nicole. We never see anyone out here. Besides, this is heaven - I think if there's one place we can do this without worrying about interruption. And my sister is nowhere - "

Nicole had accepted her argument and stopped it up with a kiss; deep, messy, and more than a little urgent.

Waverly had kissed her hungrily back, and when she pulled Nicole on her, and put her arms around her, and raised her head to kiss her as hard and deep as she could, feeling Nicole's body instinctively react and push back at her, down on her, all their inhibitions fell away.

As did their clothes, in a fluster and a rush, and soon, so did any idea they would be able to take their time with this. Because Nicole had kissed Waverly's mouth thoroughly and deep, and then her neck, sucking and kissing, and then she'd kissed a crazy course all the way back down Waverly's now naked and trembling body, back to where she'd started; and then when she was there it was only a kiss or two to go lower still. She'd settled herself, kissed the very top of one of Waverly's thighs, the very inside. And waited, a second, just basking in the anticipation of it, until she'd felt a touch on her head, and heard a weak, breathy, _Nicole, please_.

And she'd turned her head, and started there, her tongue seemingly remembering everything they'd learned together all those years ago, and then once she was there, and doing that, neither Waverly or Nicole could think of a single reason in the whole of heaven or earth for her to stop.

It had been so long, even in Waverly's timeline, that after barely a couple of minutes of Nicole losing herself in the overwhelming sensation of it, with Waverly holding her head there with one hand, the other clasped over the one of Nicole's that was stretched up and kneading in time at her breast, Waverly is arching and twisting and then coming, in a shiver and then a rush, quick and hard and complete: but it's only a start, both know.

Because Nicole is up and wiping her mouth, leaving behind a smile of purest joy, of remembrance of things past, and anticipation of things to come. She'd sat up, half kneeling half sitting over Waverly's waist and legs, and took a hand to guide Waverly's fingers inside of her, letting out a long, low moan when Waverly pushes in further, and pulls back, and pushes again, and curls; and Waverly looks up with reverence and love at Nicole, holding and guiding her hips' movement with her other hand.

She watches as Nicole just loses herself in the instinct and trust of their connection, as Waverly matches the rhythm of Nicole's movements, basks in the sensation of what they're doing, rare enough back before, and so so intimate, and so precious, and so _so_ good when Nicole's movements start to get stronger, jerkier, and Waverly feels the flutter as Nicole starts to climax, until she's bucking her hips almost violently, feeling the clench and pulse around her fingers, watching Nicole gasp a strangled closed eyed cry to the sun; a prayer of pure thanks, red hair thrown back against the blue blue sky.

It's just a moment of course, but it's one that feels like a promise of forever, to both of them. Then Nicole collapses forward, managing a simple kiss to a dazed and slightly smug looking Waverly on her way to rolling off of her and sprawling, weak as a rag doll and naked as the day she was born, half on and half off their picnic blanket.

Waverly takes one of Nicole's hands. She looks over to her for a second, sees the sheen of sweat all down her body, and feels an echo of before, just a shiver of sensation. And then she closes her eyes again and just lies there too, bathed in bone-deep bodily content.

Until she hears a giggle, and turns her head again. Nicole is chuckling to herself, the mild paroxysms shaking her shoulders and, rather distractingly Waverly finds, her breasts too.

"What? What's so funny?"

"Heh...oh, nothing. Just..."

Another string of somewhat un-Nicole giddy giggles.

"I guess God really is okay with gay sex. I'm _so_ pleased. Can we find some conservatives to make out in front of?"

Waverly tuts, indulgently, and rolls over to fit herself against Nicole's naked body, to wait for their strength to return.

When it does, they go back to the Homestead, head straight to Waverly's room, and, tugging at and tearing off their own and each other's clothes, straight to her bed.

 

Barring trips to the kitchen for snacks, and to the bathroom for showers, and to the dresser to pick out clean clothes that they near-immediately remove again, they stay there for days.

 


	5. Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5 was going to be the last. And it should be, really, this final bit all being thematically one thing. But it grew and grew in the editing...and ended up half as long again as the whole rest of this fic put together. 
> 
> Wonder if subconsciously my brain is trying to balance out the awfulness that was chapters 1 & 2 by chucking more and more at the 'happy end' part of the story? ('Happy' because, whilst these last bits are certainly intended to be the upside of the story, and do almost border on fluff at times, it's still me that's writing it. So, yanno, it's kinda more high emotion and feels than pure fluffy fluff. I think! I'm not best judge of my own stuff. See what you make of it.)
> 
> Anyhow. Point is that I'm splitting this last bit up into two installments. But they follow on pretty much straight away, so will try to get the next and final (I promise!) chapter up quick, tomorrow if I can. Hope they read alright like this.

It's late summer, or early autumn, now. Warm enough that they can still sit out watching the light fade from the skies; cold enough they're starting to need warm sweaters and blankets to do so, and are beginning to talk about when they'll build their first fire.

 

Waverly shoulders open and spins through the front door to the porch, holding two whiskey glasses holding some sort of creamy mix, ice cubes chinking against the glass. Mixology is her latest hobby and obsession, observing at her Shorty's shifts that an eternal lifetime spent drinking the same few beers might start to look less like heaven than it might do hell. So she's been running a cocktail night on Wednesdays for the last few weeks, which through word of mouth alone has grown so popular that practically the whole town that made it to this place turns out for it; an unofficial celebration of all their lives, and of their making it to the afterlife.

She hands one of her latest conconction to Nicole, and then sits next to her on the bench, stealing first most of the blanket, and then Nicole's arm, ducking forward as she pulls the arm around her shoulders, and nestles into her girl. Who takes a sip of the drink.

"Mm! This one's good. What's in it?"

"Vegan cream, rum, pinch of cinnamon, dash of almond liqueur. What do you think?"

"Yep. Definitely, this one'll be a big hit."

"Hmm," Waverly takes a sip herself, with a serious look on her face. "It's not bad. Would it be _completely_ crazy to try it again with added chocolate?"

Nicole just smiles. She hasn't hated being the guinea pig in these trials.

 

They sit quiet for a while. Waverly has a book with her, of course; and Nicole does too, but she can't seem to concentrate on it, fidgeting and fussing and reading the same page over and over again.

Eventually she gives up, and puts the book down, just looking out at the view in the gathering dusk. She sees the bright point of Sirius reveal itself low on the horizon in the darkening skies, and waits for its sister stars to appear, watching bugs and bats flitting through the lights shining out from the porch. Enjoying the simple contentment of it all, and the feeling of her love, tucked up warm and trusting against her side.

 

+++

 

Waverly finishes her chapter, before she asks. She'd sensed something was up with Nicole some time ago, but in the new way they'd learned to interact in this infinite place, wasn't in any great hurry to ask. Nicole would talk to her, she counselled herself, when she was good and ready.

But Waverly was born curious, and a gentle nudge perhaps wouldn't be out of line?

 

"Everything okay, sweetie?"

Nicole turns, and gives Waverly a warm smile. Waverly feels it in her heart, in her bones, as always. But there's still something in her love's eyes, so Waverly holds her look, not questioning, just waiting.

"This is so great, Waves."

Nicole turns her head again, and gestures vaguely with her glass at the view, as if to indicate everything.

"This. You. Us. Our life here. It's - " She laughs. "It's heaven. Literally."

"Okaay. So, why are you giving me that 'somebody's parked illegally and I just have to go and talk to them about it' feeling?" Waverly teases.

"It's just."

Waverly waits. Thinks she has half an idea what's coming.

"It's. God, I can't believe I'm saying this. But."

A long, long pause, before Waverly nudges her again, gently.

"Hey. It's okay Nicole, it's me. You can tell me whatever it is."

"Is this it?"

The words fall out in a plaintive rush, Nicole turning to Waverly, and for the first time since she arrived, looking genuinely lost.

"I mean, I know how ungrateful that sounds. But it's just not me, Waves, all this sitting around. I was put on this planet - god, this _place_ , I can't even talk right here! I always felt a purpose, Wave. You know I wasn't crazy religious, but I always felt like - down there - "

Nicole frowns as she struggles to find the words, and her tone is getting more and more upset.

" - wherever that was - like I was there to serve. And that was important to me, you know it was. And, you know, I love being here with you. It's been so amazing, just spending time with you, and with our friends, and not having to worry about revenants jumping out at us every five minutes. I mean, the worst has already happened, right? And so you're safe now - and you're - "

Her eyes are a little glassy with unshed tears of emotion, as she reaches out a hand to touch Waverly's cheek, and takes a shaky breath.

"You're _here_. And I've got you again. And I love you so much. And I can't believe what I'm saying. I don't _know_ what I am saying. Jesus, Waverly. What am I saying?"

Nicole shakes her head, frustrated. Waverly looks at her for a long time, levelly, then reaches and takes her drink from her, sets it on the floor, twists a little in the seat, tucking one leg under her, and, taking both of Nicole's hands, ducks her head, to look up and catch Nicole's shamedly averted eyes.

"Hey. Hey baby, look at me? I think I know what you're trying to say. And I've kinda been waiting for you to say it."

Nicole grimaces, uncertain if she wants to know what is in her own head after all. And Waverly decides for her.

"You're a _cop_. You _are_. That's who you were, and so it's who you still are."

Nicole scoffs. "Lot of criminals are there, here?"

Waverly smiles fondly at her grumpy, almost sulky objection. She'd missed Nicole so much, every last bit of her, and so she was overcome with a rush of amused recognition and love when she saw even this slightly bratty side of her girlfriend emerge.

"Well, maybe not. But people still need looking out for, Nicole. You know there are still consequences to our actions here. Shorty's still limping after he fell off that stool last week, you know? And, some people's idea of heaven is driving around town at top speed in their convertibles blasting music and ignoring road signs, and some other people's idea is day drinking and jaywalking: and those two don't mix."

She's referring to a near miss from last week, which was still the talk of the after-life.

"I don't suppose you can actually die in this place, but you can get hurt. And we could do with a bit of law and order around here if you ask me. I'm sick of having to hear old Mrs Thompson complain again about the late night noise coming from Shorty's, and then sick of having to explain to the guys who drink there the next night that they may not have work in the morning, but not everybody wants to be kept up til one in the morning. A bit of authority wouldn't hurt us at all, I don't think."

Nicole frowns, thinking.

"But - I mean, is there even law here? I can't exactly go around arresting people, can I?"

"No. I suppose that's true. But - you're _you_." Waverly looks at Nicole with that absolute trust that she always has, that look that Nicole never really believed she deserved, but had spent a lifetime trying to live up to.

"People love you, Nicole. And they respect you. If you explain why we need a bit of consideration for each other, people will listen. How long were you Sheriff for? You know this town and its people inside out. There's no-one better placed to know where the balance lies."

"Hmm. I suppose - well. I mean. Hmm."

Nicole's thoughtful look has turned inwards. Waverly can practically see the gears turning.

"Hmm." Nicole, says again, leaning down and picking up her drink again, taking a sip from it.

 

Waverly smiles, unseen, as Nicole sits back again, wraps her arm back around Waverly's shoulders almost absently, looking out to the now darkening night, but seeing something in her own mind's eye. She watches her love think of options, make plans, taking the idea and running with it, to where Waverly didn't yet know, but was sure she would be impressed when she finds out.

She watches her for a moment longer, then leans across, kisses her cheek, and just burrows back into her side, pulling the blanket snugger round them both. Picking up her book again to start a new chapter.

 

+++

 

Nicole takes soundings around the town, setting up shop in Shorty's for the best part of a week getting views, opinions, and trying out a few of her ideas to the more receptive townsfolk. The breakthrough moment was when she realised that though there was definitely some order required around the place, what people needed more was advice, and help adjusting to their new lives.

It turned out she was not the only person looking to keep themselves busy, or who wanted to keep their hand in in whatever their vocation had been in life. On the other hand, there were people here whose loved ones hadn't made it, or who for one reason or another had been good people, but had led lonely lives. It seemed that there was something in-built about the place that seemed to lessen the pain of that here, and none of these people were truly unhappy; but they were still short on company. Nicole's big idea was to effectively match-make, between those folk and those who wanted to keep busy, pairing them off, arranging visiting rotas, keeping an eye out for new arrivals and ensuring they're welcomed and supported.

 

She goes to see Nedley, who out and out laughs in her face when she encourages him to get involved.

"How long were you Sheriff for, Nicole?"

"26 years, sir."

Nicole is in civvies, as always these days, but Nedley can practically see the shadow of her uniform as she sits up straight with pride.

"Hoo. Aren't you _tired_ , Nicole? I tell you, I enjoyed that retirement even more than I thought I would. Fishin' all day long, not a body to bother me. You were Sheriff of _Purgatory,_  Nicole. Things that go bump in the night central. Don't you think you've earned a rest?"

Nicole shrugs.

"Well, okay then. You always were a better cop than me, anyhow."

Nicole blusters a refusal of the compliment. But her back straightens, even more, as they run through her plans, together.

 

A few weeks more of plotting, planning, and sending the secret weapon that was Waverly and her unrefusable smile to cajole the key individuals she needed to sign-up and help, and a commandeering of what had become a very dusty Purgatory Sheriff's Department Offices: and the Purgatory Afterlife Community Team Service is born.

 

Waverly designs a cute red fox logo, fooling absolutely no-one about the source of her inspiration, and sets it on a badge. And then makes hats.

 

* * *

 

So it is that life falls into a pleasant rhythm. Both Waverly and Nicole are occupied working, at Shorty's and for PACTS, enough to feel useful and good about themselves, but few enough hours that it leaves plenty of time and energy to enjoy all that heaven has to offer.

Waverly watches with quiet pride and pleasure how with every day that passes, some of the pain Nicole had carried from her long hard life drops away, and with it her energy and enthusiasm for diversion and fun comes back.

And with both of them having more time than they'd had ever had before, and of course without the constant danger and distraction of the curse, they branch out with their activities, both separately, and together, crossing into and weaving between each other's interests. Nicole teaches Waverly the basics of climbing, and they add bouldering and some easy climbs to their long walks. Nicole sets up and then starts attending herself 'Learn a Language Day', slowly augmenting her basic Spanish, with Waverly helping her with her homework.

Waverly also delights in, and in no small measure benefits from, the discovery that if they'd both loved the physical side of their relationship in life, and if Nicole had never been less than enthusiastic and incredible at it, well. Give her time, space, a sense of purpose, and take the weight off of her shoulders, and, oh, _boy_.

 

Nicole would go to her work most mornings with an enormous smile on her face, and a spring in her step. And Waverly felt very, very, _very_ well looked after.

 

* * *

 

One day they're coming back from an aimless afternoon walk when, at the bend in the approach road to the homestead, they see somebody sat on the porch, seemingly waiting for them.

Both jump a little, the life they'd led before still enough to awaken a warning in their bones at any unexpected visitors. But whoever this is doesn't look threatening. They don't recognise at the distance who it is, but it looks like an old woman. Whoever it is is a little fat, or thick set at least, with long grey hair tied back, with stripes of gaudy blue and green dyed in, vivid against the white. Unusual for Purgatory, they both think. Plus, she's also dressed somewhat unusually for the older ladies of the town; in black jeans, boots, and an old beat-up black leather jacket.

With fringes.

"Oh - my god," mutters Waverly under her breath as they get closer. "Oh my god oh my god," she repeats in a rising tone, as they increase the pace of their approach, registering as they get closer how the woman is sitting - not on the bench, but up on the railing, leaning her back against the post, one leg bent, one dangling insouciantly down. Drinking a coffee, and looking completely at home. Almost as if she owned the place.

Waverly drops Nicole's hand as her hurrying walk turns into a full-on run, and her disbelieving words into a squeal of astonished joy: and she's sprinting towards the porch.

 

Wynonna Earp hops off the railing, lands heavily, curses up a storm as she rubs a knee. And then straightens, and grins, and braces herself for the impact of her sister - who barrels into her arms at full speed.

Wynonna lets her momentum turn into a lift, and she swings her armful of Waverly around in the air once, as much in stubborn pride to show that she still can as anything, but then is forced to drop her down on the ground. She doesn't let go however, and neither does Waverly, who's incoherent with emotion, laughing and crying and hiccuping out 'Wynonna, Wynonna, Wynonna!' over and over again, as if that single word could convey all the hours of what she wanted to say, to tell her in just that one beautiful moment.

Nicole had continued her slightly more measured walk up to the house, but she too is smiling, grinning wide and shaking her head, a wonderful ache in her chest at the sight of the happiness she can see just pouring from Waverly as she finally disengages from her hug with her sister, not to mention from her own genuinely felt emotions.

Waverly steps back, wiping tears from her eyes, to allow the two old friends their own greeting.

 

"Dude!"

Nicole reaches Wynonna, and lifts her hands to place them on her shoulders. And just looks at Wynonna, long, happily, and completely unashamed. She looks her up and down, taking in the changed physicality of her sister in law, but nothing changed in the mischievous energy that is just radiating out from her.

"Wynonna. You're old." Nicole smiles, her own teasing mischief risen from slumber by the pure fact of Wynonna's presence. "And fat!"

Wynonna laughs, heartily. "Fuck you!" she says, completely without any malice. "I see death hasn't dislodged that stick up your butt. You're still the same  judgemental little shit in heaven as you were on earth."

"Fuck you too, Wynonna." Nicole grins, through her own emerging tears. "Fuck you. Come here. Come here."

They fall into their own hug, both arms holding tight around each other's backs, rocking each other from foot to foot in greeting and in amazement and in pure incoherent emotion.

Wynonna is actually the first to find words. Which she throws, in a hoarse, almost guilty whisper, over Nicole's shoulder. All those long years leaning on each other and they were still not good at the eye-to-eye stuff. 

"Sheee-it. Jesus, Haught, I missed you. When you went I thought that, well, worst thing, you've at least found your peace. But I hoped you'd be here. With her, you know? So I was happy for you, really. But _fuck_ me. I can't believe how much I missed you. You stupid, law abiding, honourable, kind, stupid, supportive..."

Nicole for her part can't even form words through the lump in her throat, so doesn't try. She just squeezes Wynonna harder, laughing, and then eventually needing to pull back to wipe away the happy tears now fair streaming down her face. Wynonna puts one of her own hands on Nicole's shoulder, rubbing and patting it awkwardly, whilst Nicole laughs, wiping her nose and sniffing, grinning up at her old friend wryly from red-rimmed eyes.

"Yeah. I kinda missed you too, Wy."

They smile at each other a moment longer, but both seem to agree to drop the sappy shit at the exact same time, and turn and wander up the porch steps together, Waverly following close behind.

"What got you in the end, sis?" she asks, curious.

"Ah, fuck. You're not gonna believe this, but - heart attack? I think? I didn't know a lot about it to be honest, just woke up in pain and couldn't breath one night, next thing I know I'm here. I mean I know I had, like, _super_ bad cholesterol and the doctors were always on at me..."

Nicole starts laughing again. "You're not telling me that the great Wynonna Earp, Earp heir, finisher of the curse, bane of all demons, was finally put down by - " she's overcome with laughter, and so Waverly finishes for her.

"Donuts? Donuts, Wy?!"

Waverly is half incredulous, and half a little pissed at her sister.

"Ah, shaddup. We can't all die like heroes like you two. Like Miss Posthumous Order of Merit over here..."

The three of them wander inside, bickering happily.

 

+++

 

It's a long long evening of catching up, which then goes late into the night, as Wynonna regales them with stories of life back on earth. She tells them about demons and adventures, sure, but keeps on coming back with a greater pride in her voice, and a faraway smile which has Nicole catch Waverly's eye with her own happy pride, to her kids' lives.

She tells them how little Mikey had taken after his aunt and gone into law enforcement - but in the Big City, far away from Purgatory and his parents' long shadow. How Alice was living her own slightly chaotic, but loving life, graduating from backpacking half-way around the world when a student, to an adult life spent working a range of first voluntary and then paid positions in international aid organisations in disaster or war zones. When her family asked her what on earth she thought she was doing, she'd reply _Fighting demons_ , with the same lop-sided grin and twinkle in her eye that Wynonna saw in the mirror each morning. Which tended to shut her mother and both her fathers up, even if it never entirely quelled their worries.

Waverly and Nicole give their own, shorter history of what they've been up to, and then before they know it it's gone two in the morning, and the yawning and stretching of all three of the women becomes too much to ignore.

Waverly is tucked sleepy into Nicole's side, Nicole with one arm comfortably around her, and Wynonna is sat in an armchair across from them, happily but not incoherently drunk.

"Time for you to be getting off home, then Haught?"

Waverly tuts at her sister, despite seeing and understanding the tease in her grin.

"She's staying here, Wy. And - no arguments - she's going to stay here, period. She's a darn sight tidier than you ever were."

"Oh, _hell_ to the no. I remember you two," Wynonna says darkly, before putting on an exaggerated, high, breathy voice. " _Yes_ Nicole, oh _god_ Nicole, harder Nicole - "

Her impression is cut off by a decorative pillow in the face, thrown with all the strength of Waverly's mortification. Who covers her blushing face with both hands and turns in a cringe of embarrassment into Nicole. Nicole, having been friends with Wynonna for longer even than Waverly had been her sister, just pulls Waverly to her in a hug, and laughs, heartily and long.

Wynonna grins wickedly at the two of them, then tosses the last of her whiskey down her throat, tosses the pillow over her shoulder, heedlessly, and hauls herself to her feet to head off to bed. She points at the two of them as she passes, a little woozy with drink.

"You've got til Dolls gets here. Then I want you out."

 

They discuss living arrangements again the next day, a little soberer and all having had time to think about it. And discover that Nicole and Waverly had come to the exact same conclusion.

 

* * *

 

The building of Waverly and Nicole's new home is an idle affair. There's no hurry in this place, and no constraints of budget or practicalities to worry about. Nicole pulls in every contact she has through PACTS to help out with the project, which is limited only by Waverly's imagination and apparent flair for design, and Nicole's determined ingenuity in application and construction which is to say, not limited at all.

They're still at the early stages of the build when Dolls joins Wynonna, but neither of them follow through on Wynonna's promise to kick the two lovers out, in truth all four secretly enjoying the enforced companionship after so long kept apart.

But eventually, by the start of the next summer, it's ready.

 

+++

 

The end of a long, hot day of moving in and setting up, and Waverly and Nicole are stood out in the fledgling grass of their new front yard. They're taking in with hands held and hearts full of quiet pride the look of the place: newly varnished wood and bright paintwork, brand new and extra long porch seat, hanging metalwork decorations turning idly in the breeze, catching and scattering the golden light of a setting sun.

They stand for a long time wordless in content, when eventually Nicole squeezes then drops Waverly's hand, takes a deep breath, bends and grabs behind her legs, and before Waverly knows it she's tipped and lifted up into Nicole's arms, bridal style. Waverly shrieks, holding on for dear life around Nicole's neck as she walks them towards their house, giggling at Nicole huffing and puffing and clearly struggling to hold her after a full day of lugging boxes up and down the porch steps.

But Nicole stubbornly refuses to put her down until she's up the steps and in the house, and then she's got the added challenge of Waverly pulling her into an awkward but passionate kiss, weakening her further and nearly causing her to drop Waverly there and then. But she manages to get them to their bedroom, just, before dropping Waverly to fall the final foot onto their new bed and falling on top of her, laughing herself now, more of an exhausted collapse than any suave or practised move.

They both need to catch their breath, from the exertion and laughter respectively. But then Waverly pushes Nicole over to her back, rolling with her to renew and deepen that kiss.

In truth, Nicole was exhausted, not to mention still pretty hot and sweaty from the efforts of the day. But Waverly is lighting fires everywhere she kisses, still giggling a little at the cliche romance of it all; and it's their first night in their new home, goddamnit. And Waverly feels good, oh so so good, as she moves with delighted intent further down her body. So Nicole just lies back, and closes her eyes, and smiles in blissful content, and lets Waverly get her hotter and sweatier still.

 


	6. A Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to say to you lovely, intrepid readers who have given this one a go - *thank you*.
> 
> It is such an awful idea for a story. And if I saw the summary for this one pop up, there's no way in hell (or heaven perhaps I should say...) I'd have clicked on it. So if you have, and if you've got this far, then I just wanted to give enormous kudos to you for being open-minded enough to go there.
> 
> I really didn't plan to write this one, I promise. It really was just that long hard shitty day, after three months of really long hard shitty weeks. Sat on that train, looking out the window at the bleak misty lowlands rushing past, but seeing Waverly dying in Nicole's arms. Seeing Wynonna and Nicole alternately lose their shit, and hold each other up; seeing Nicole reunite with Waverly in the afterlife, and wondering what happens *after* the happy-ever-after of that, that just took root in me and wouldn't let go until I'd written it down.
> 
> I probably could've just left it written out, but unpublished. But, there's this couplet in a song lyric I know, all about unsolveable contradictions, that always niggles at me. 'A writer writes for themselves, not for you / A song is not a song, til it's listened to.'
> 
> So, the latter half of that, and in getting to know the frankly astonishing generosity of spirit of yer average Earper via various comments on some of my other trickier stories, gave me the confidence to put this up here.
> 
> Anyway, that was a long and frankly unnecessary emotional ramble. Unusually for me (because despite what you'd think from reading my fics, I am actually like ninety-nine percent made of stone) this has actually been a pretty affecting one to write. There have been tears, y'all.
> 
> If it has been similarly something to read, then I'm sorry. I hope at least I've done the idea some sort of justice. And I'd be really really interested to hear any thoughts you had, on why you started to read this one, or what you thought of it, if you felt at all minded to leave a comment.
> 
> Now. When you're done with this one, can I humbly suggest you go off and read Fireworks, as evidence that I actually have it in me to just be nice to these two? ;-)

It's a full turn of the year there before the simple joy of it all fades to a happy, easy contentment.

 

And another half year before the novelty of coming home to their own house, safe and easy and just how they always dreamed of it, becomes in any way routine.

 

But in another half year still, it finally does.

 

+++

 

It's a lazy Sunday morning in bed. The morning light is angling in through the long, high windows they'd designed just for this purpose; the aspect carefully chosen to give them both a stunning view of mountains climbing in the distance, with no human habitation in sight so as to give them complete privacy should they want to leave the drapes up, as they had today. The remains of an indulgent breakfast is on their bedside cabinets, half drunk orange juice, empty coffee cups, plates covered in the flaky sticky detritus of croissants with jelly.

Waverly is lying on her side, an arm tucked under her head, looking up at Nicole with an inscrutable look. For her part, Nicole is sitting up, and just enjoying the view. Waverly is lying half in, half out of the covers, one tanned leg emerging from and providing a contrast to the tangle of white sheets. Nicole smiles, reaches down and squeezes a foot affectionately, which wriggles and kicks away her grasp, before Nicole lies down herself, mirroring Waverly's posture, facing her.

They look at each other for a long time, just the hint of warm smiles in each of their eyes enough to convey their love and content.

But eventually, Nicole breaks.

"There's no hurry, Waves. But when you want to talk about it, I'm ready to listen."

Waverly frowns.

"Talk about what?"

"I don't know. You tell me. Whatever it is that's got you with that look lately."

Waverly looks a little cross. Nicole thinks it looks cute as anything.

"I can't put anything past you, can I, Officer Haught?"

"Nope. But, like I say, no hurry. Just know that I'm here."

Waverly looks at her love for a long time.

She's so beautiful like this, Waverly thinks. The sunlight streaming in through the window sets sparks of red and gold fire through her hair. Her skin is smooth, clear, pale as ever, providing a stunning contrast to the brown of her eyes, the pink of her lips. God, her  _lips_ , Waverly thinks. I remember how obsessed I used to be with them before we were together. _God_ I wanted to kiss them. God how I wanted them to kiss me.

Then she lets herself look into the deep, brown eyes. Which look clear, and calm, just looking back at her, patiently, and with a gentle focus, like there was nothing else in the universe but her.

Perhaps it is time. Perhaps she is ready.

Waverly rolls onto her back.

"Do you remember that question you asked?" She sighs, a little ruefully. "I get now why you felt so guilty."

"What question, Wave?"

"You know. That question. The one you asked before you started PACTs."

"Oh.  _That_  question."

"Yup. The - " Waverly takes a deep breath, then plunges forward. "The 'is this it' question."

Nicole doesn't ask Waverly more about where she's coming from. She gets it. She just finds a hand under the covers, and squeezes it.

"Why now? What's changed?"

 

 _You have_ , thinks Waverly.

You think that PACTS was a project. You think that our house was a project. Well, you don't know about my secret project. My, help Nicole to find her peace project. Help her to be happy, as happy as she possible can be, project.

 

Because she knew,  _happy as she can be_  was the best she could reasonably do for Nicole.

She'd complained to Wynonna about it, once. She understood, really, but after one particularly tough week of Nicole's black moods and uncommunicative silence, turning away from Waverly's touch and withdrawing from any suggestion of joint activities, Waverly's frustrations had bubbled to the surface and found an outlet in her sister.

"It's heaven, Wy, and she's walking around like a bear with a sore head. What else can I do?"

Wynonna had met her eyes with a long, careful look. Then sighed, and decided Waverly needed to know.

"There's nothing, Waves. She watched you die. We both did. She held you, and couldn't do anything to stop it, and just had to watch you just - slip away. And trust me, there is absolutely  _nothing_  that you, or anyone, can do, to help her get over that."

"But we're here, now! I'm here, and we're together, again. I get how hard it must have been, but that's all in the past now!"

"No it's  _not_." Wynonna almost snaps, then relents and softens her tone.

"It still hurts, baby girl. Sometimes I look at you, and it actually physically hurts. All those years. And you don't know what it was like, not knowing if we'd ever see you again - or if how we saw you that day was the last time we ever would. It was awful, Waves."

Waverly's eyed had started to fill up, equal parts shame and concern, and Wynonna had reached over, covered one of her hands.

"Oh, hey. It's okay, I totally get it. She's a royal pain in the ass when she gets like this, I know. Just. Give her a break, okay? She's doing her best."

 

But that had been almost three years ago, since when Nicole had got freer and easier, the dark moods coming less frequently, and lifting sooner. Waverly didn't think she'd ever be completely over it, but, as she turns her head, looks over to the love of her life, seeing her look as relaxed and happy as she thinks she's ever been, she thinks that Nicole is about as healed now as she ever is going to be.

And decides to be honest.

"You have, love. It was the last thing."

She watches Nicole carefully, sees just a flicker of offended hurt there, before it's replaced with understanding, and acceptance.

"Ah. Right. Okay."

And Nicole rolls over to her back, too. They lie, side by side, holding hands, staring up at the ceiling.

"Perhaps we can ask?" Nicole suggests.

"Ask - you mean -  _her_?"

" 'Her' ?" Nicole says with a grin in her voice. She feels Waverly's shrug through the movement of the sheets, rather than sees it.

"It feels like a her, don't you think?"

They're quiet for a moment again, before Waverly speaks again. "Yeah. Good plan. Lets ask."

Nicole rolls over onto her side again, propping her head up on a hand. "How do we do that?"

"I don't exactly know. I mean, I normally just think, really hard. Like talking in my head. And it's like she knows I'm talking to her. Maybe - maybe, if we ask out loud? Together?"

Nicole sits up. Clears her throat. And looks down at Waverly, a little worried.

"Now?"

Waverly looks uncertain. "There's no hurry, right?"

And knows she's made the right decision when the momentary frown falls from Nicole's face, to be replaced with that soft, almost goofy grin again.

"No. No hurry at all. Now. Where were we?"

They hadn't been anywhere at all. But it was Sunday morning, and they had nowhere to be, and their breakfast of some time ago had settled, and their room was sunlit and warm, and her beautiful girlfriend was looking down at her like she was a cool glass of water on a long, hot summer's day.

Waverly quirks an eyebrow, stretches and wriggles a little in pleasant anticipation. And then looks up at Nicole, a soft and inviting smile.

"C'mere."

 

When those lips kiss hers, soft, and then firm. When Nicole's hand slides down her smooth leg, and then back up again, pushing pesky sheets and nightshirts out the way. When Nicole strips off her own top, and lies on her, and Waverly feels the familiar comfort of her weight, the soft press of Nicole's breasts against her own. When she looks up into Nicole's eyes, and sees the limitless love that's held there. When she opens her arms, her heart, her body, everything she is to Nicole. When Nicole touches her. When she  _touches_  her. When she comes, grounded and lifted and falling apart under that touch; when Nicole comes too, with Waverly, because of Waverly. When they fall silent afterwards, Nicole bare from the waist up, Waverly from the waist down, Nicole curled into Waverly's chest, Waverly holding her head to her, stroking her hair.

Waverly thinks, over and over, yes, okay, yes, this is heaven. This right here is heaven.

 

* * *

 

Somehow the knowledge that they can ask, takes away the need to actually do so. And so they spend another happy year, basking in their renewed enthusiasm for the life in this place and all it has to offer.

It's peculiar, watching the Purgatory they know change around them, as each new arrival turns up expecting to see the Purgatory that they knew when they passed. Things change, and yet stay the same, and there seems to be some trick that stops them being surprised when the cars get smaller and quieter and eventually go fully electric, and the music on the jukebox at Shorty's whips through the decades.

One day Alice Michelle turns up. She apparently had pushed her luck in one too many disaster zones, finally succumbing to illness having point blank refused the orders of her charity to return from the humanitarian crisis she was helping at to get treatment. She arrives in heaven a whirlwind of smiles and energy, not regretting her death in the slightest; and with the smarts she shared with her aunt and the straight-to-the-point no bullshit judgement of her mother, reaches the same conclusion it had taken Waverly and Nicole months to get to in just a matter of days, deciding that a heaven without problems to fix was no sort of heaven at all.

She joins PACTS, and re-invigorates it, and Nicole is more than happy to let her, taking a back seat and watching with no small amount of pride as the niece that she'd helped raise takes on her set-up, and in truth, improves it.

 

And then, another year later, Waverly finally gets to meet 'little Mikey'.

 _Michael,_  the six foot two, two-hundred pound Chief Superintendent intones seriously, rolling his eyes at his mother, who is laughing, and crying, teasing her children and hugging them, her family finally complete, and in one place, together.

 

+++

 

So it is that every day brings something new. But, nonetheless, the question hangs in the air between them.

And one day, Nicole looks over to Waverly, and sees that look in her eyes again.

They're on their porch, winter now, with the first fall of snow on the ground still looking like crystalline magic, rather than the cold wet inconvenience it will become before spring rolls around again. They're wrapped and swaddled in their warm winter coats and hats, sipping hot chocolate, standing at the railing, too cold to sit, just watching the day go by.

Waverly turns her head from the view, to see her love looking at her contemplatively.

"Nicole?"

"I was just wondering. If you thought it might be time. You know."

"To ask?"

"Yeah. I mean, not least because if we don't, Alice will."

Waverly laughs. "True. How has she not, come to think of it?"

Nicole shrugs. "Busy turning Purgatory upside down still, isn't she."

Another laugh. "I guess."

Then they fall quiet again. They're quiet a lot, these days. And in the quiet, the question has got louder, and louder.

"I'm not like you, Nicole."

Nicole looks at Waverly, not exactly sure what's coming.

"I never had a vocation like you. I know I complained about it, but the honest truth is I didn't mind just working at Shorty's. Small town life, you know. So long as I could study on my own time."

She falls quiet, but Nicole waits. Knows there's more.

"But the learning - I mean, I loved it, right? I still do. I love knowledge for its own sake. But, back then."

Waverly blows on then takes a sip of her drink, shakes her head a little ruefully.

"Honestly, I always had in the back of my mind that I would somehow find a way to be the big hero. I would break the curse. If I could just read one more history, learn one more language..."

A heavy sigh.

"Hey," says Nicole, soft with concern. "Your languages got us out of trouble more than once, Wave. And all your work on the curse - we'd have been dead in the water without your research."

A small quirk of a smile in acknowledgement.

"Okay. Thank you, sweetie. But, my point is - everything I did before all had a deeper purpose. But here?"

Nicole bit her lip. She wanted to reassure Waverly, but fundamentally agreed with her. And knew there was no point lying in false reassurance: her lover could see through her like water.

"I think all I'm saying is, yes. I think I want to ask."

Nicole nods.

"Okay then."

She clears her throat. Looks over to Waverly, who gives her a determined and certain nod.

And so Nicole straightens to address the snow and sky, in her best Sheriff Haught voice, clear and loud.

"Ah. Hello. We wondered if you could tell us what our options are."

Waverly is already laughing at her girlfriend's formal tone and manner of address, when both of them are filled with the strangest sensation. A bubbling, joyful feeling that washes through and lifts both of them into euphoria.

Almost as if the almighty ineffable eternal wordless word was _giggling_.

 _I'm glad you finally asked, PACTS Honorary Chairperson Haught_ , the understanding comes to them.  _Your options, are, basically, limitless._

Nicole looks at Waverly, to check Waverly is hearing the same as she. She gets a little nod in confirmation, but a slightly worried one. The message wasn't particularly helpful.

"Thank you. But, I mean, could you give a few examples, perhaps?"

 _Okay, okay_ , it seems to relent.  _Well. You can keep doing what you're doing; forever, if you want. Good job, by the way. The dance classes were a particularly nice touch. I like the salsa._

These had been a joint idea between Waverly and the bar staff at Shorty's, and Nicole and PACTS. Combining the social mission of the latter with the perhaps pointless, but still restlessly exercised, business acumen of Shorty and Waverly.

_Or, you can travel. Explore. See the world, everything it has to offer. See it change. Some people do that forever. Set off, and just never come back._

Waverly looks at Nicole, eyebrows raised in an uncertain, _maybe_?

_Or, you can live your lives together, and grow old. A lot of people in your situation do that. Live the lives you couldn't before. Get married. Have kids._

"Kids?" says Nicole out loud, confused.

 _If you want. And we can arrange for them to be part of both of you._   _Biology is no object, here._

Nicole looks at Waverly, whose uncertain look has grown into a full frown.

"Kids?" Nicole says again. "I mean. I can hear like a thousand lesbians yelling at me to not look a gift-horse in the mouth but - it would be a little weird, wouldn't it? I mean, they wouldn't be - real?"

 _They'd be real as you are_ , comes the understanding.

Waverly shrugs, still hesitantly, but clearly trying to give the idea some space. This was not something they'd ever talked about. Obviously.

"Yeah...but they'd be safe, Nicole. Can you imagine having a baby, before? In Purgatory? We'd have been terrified the whole time."

"I guess."

_Well, it's an option. And a lot of people who were separated young like you were do that, have the family lives they couldn't before. And then once they've lived their whole lives together, many find that that's enough. And decide to go to their final peace._

Both of their eyes widen in surprise. And the understanding responds to their unasked question.

_Oh yes. You only do this for as long as you want. And, again, we can be careful with timings. You can decide when you want to stop, and you can stop together._

It's strange, but somehow knowing this comes as a relief, to both of them.

_But only when you want. Only when you want._

It's a lot to absorb, and they're both stunned, almost beyond the point of taking any more in. But Waverly has still got that restless look about her, somehow, and Nicole sees.

"Is there anything else?" Nicole asks.

That amazing bubbling laughing sensation again.

_You two are something else, aren't you? Yes, there is. Although most people never get beyond what you've already been offered._

_There are always children. In heaven and earth, there are always children who need love._

_You know that only the good come here. And of course it's mostly the old. But children die too, even babies. And when they do, they come here. We won't hold their misdemeanours against them, not when they're so young. So we bring them here, and they wait for their parents._

_It is the worst thing we let happen to you, you know. Let you lose your children. So for those parents that do, we let them come here too. Whatever they've done before, they've suffered enough already. And so when they pass, they get their children and babies back, at the same age that they lost them, to have the chance to raise them that was taken from them before._

Waverly starts to get an idea about where this might be going.

"But - what happens to the children when they first get here? They have to wait whilst their parents are still living, right?"

_Right. And they need to be looked after whilst they do. We make sure they're not too confused or upset. But they need human care, too. Children need love. All children need love. And we are always looking out for those who've got enough to give it to them._

The knowledge of the implied offer fully sinks in. Waverly turns fully to Nicole, and Nicole takes her hands. The uncertainty that was on their faces has fallen away, and is replaced for both of them with a sort of wondering shock. All these paths open in front of them, but one so clear and true and unexpected it almost floors them.

 _There's no hurry to decide_ , the understanding comes.

But Nicole and Waverly had been reading each other's intentions for a long long time now. Maybe from the first duck of a head and a knowing smile in a small town bar. Or, less than a fortnight later at a wake at the self same bar, from the searing look of gratitude combined with a confused but growing need. From a wave from a porch, in the relief of a new dawn's golden light; to the nervous but determined unbuttoning of a shirt, in a freshly decorated room. They knew each other, and what they wanted, right from the very start.

_And you don't have to choose just one option. You can do all of them, or any. In turn or together._

Waverly quirks an eyebrow at Nicole, and Nicole half shrugs one shoulder, grinning back at her.

And both know there was no need to worry about what choice they'd make.

Because Nicole Haught, first female Sheriff in Purgatory, youngest woman to be appointed Sheriff in the whole province; father to the town in the fact of her job, and mother to it in the way she worked it, looked at Waverly Earp. Abandoned, orphaned, and abandoned again.

_Your options are open._

Waverly took a long, deep breath, and when she released it, it was with a nervous and happy smile.

And Nicole simply beamed at her, took a step forward, and took her into her arms.

She feels Waverly's arms link around her back, and squeeze hard. She knew and recognised this hug as one of excitement, and felt her own enthusiasm rising within her uncontrollably, those feelings mixing and augmenting the amazing way she always felt when holding Waverly, when Waverly held her.

An echo of a phrase came to her, and in the euphoria of that moment it had lost all its painful history, to be replaced with pure love, happiness, and gratitude.

She kisses Waverly lightly on the head, and tightens her arms, pulling Waverly even closer to her. And whispers.

"I love you so much, Waverly. You make me complete. You make my life complete."

 

 

The understanding leaves them to it. It was right. There was no hurry. If the decision in truth had already been made, there was no hurry to confirm it.

Not when every night, Nicole fell asleep with Waverly safe and warm in her arms.

Not when every morning, Waverly would wake her with a coffee, and a kiss.

 


End file.
